g as with embroidery the texture of
his English--awes and astonishes the plain reader; but if, in
addition, you permit yourself to require the refining charm of
delicacy, the elevating one of imagination--if you permit yourself to
be as fastidious and exacting in these matters as, by your own
confession, it appears _you_ are, then Mr. Lewes must necessarily
inform you that he does not deal in the article; probably he will add
that _therefore_ it must be non-essential. I should fear he might
even stigmatise imagination as a figment, and delicacy as an
affectation.

'An honest rough heartiness Mr. Lewes will give you; yet in case you
have the misfortune to remark that the heartiness might be quite as
honest if it were less rough, would you not run the risk of being
termed a sentimentalist or a dreamer?

'Were I privileged to address Mr. Lewes, and were it wise or becoming
to say to him exactly what one thinks, I should utter words to this
effect--

'"You have a sound, clear judgment as far as it goes, but I conceive
it to be limited; your standard of talent is high, but I cannot
acknowledge it to be the highest; you are deserving of all attention
when you lay down the law on principles, but you are to be resisted
when you dogmatise on feelings.

'"To a certain point, Mr. Lewes, you can go, but no farther. Be as
sceptical as you please on whatever lies beyond a certain
intellectual limit; the mystery will never be cleared up to you, for
that limit you will never overpass. Not all your learning, not all
your reading, not all your sagacity, not all your perseverance can
help you over one viewless line--one boundary as impassable as it is
invisible. To enter that sphere a man must be born within it; and
untaught peasants have there drawn their first breath, while learned
philosophers have striven hard till old age to reach it, and have
never succeeded." I should not dare, nor would it be right, to say
this to Mr. Lewes, but I cannot help thinking it both of him and many
others who have a great name in the world.

'Hester Mason's character, career, and fate appeared to me so
strange, grovelling, and miserable, that I never for a moment doubted
the whole dreary picture was from the life. I thought in describing
the "rustic poetess," in giving the details of her vulgar pro