Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/301

Rh argument. The early vituperation of Disraeli, of his Judaism and the doctrine of race, is a landmark to measure the long procession of her views. In Deronda days she judged Lord Beaconsfield more benignly, relishing his disdain for the popular voice and his literary finish beyond the effective qualities of his rival.

Promptness in opening her mind to new influence, and ardour of gratitude and respect had changed into a quiet resolve to keep cool and resist ascendency. There was nobody among her acquaintances to whom she owed such obligations as she acknowledges to Mr. Herbert Spencer. Although she underrated his constructive talent, and did not overrate his emotional gifts, she foresaw very early the position he afterwards attained. He made the sunshine of her desolate life in London ; they met every day, and the two minds, strangely unlike each other, worked in a like direction. The friendship with Lewes made slower progress.

George Eliot retired from the management of the Review without having found her vocation or struck a vein of ore. She employed herself in translating Spinoza and Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity had been published more than twelve years, and expressed neither a prevailing phase of philosophy nor the last views of the author. More than any other work it had contributed to the downfall of metaphysics, and it contained an ingenious theory of the rise and growth of religion, and of the relation of the soul to God, while denying the existence of either. Feuerbach repudiated Christianity so decisively that Strauss was distanced and stranded for thirty years and it would have been difficult to introduce to the British public any work of the same kind written with as much ability. It met no demand and was received with cold reserve. A letter of December 1874 shows that Feuerbach's theogony survived in her system longer than his scoffing and destructive spirit. He learnt towards the end of his life that a prominent American politician had been converted from Christianity by his book in the translation of Marian Evans. The news would not have