ble intercourse of an
elder mind with a younger.

The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type
both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which
is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done.
[Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original
artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of
beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich
enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse
these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a
copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations,

M.E. LEWES.

By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue
eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any
sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge
toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of
things.

THE PRIORY,
21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73.

[Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed
to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.]

Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and
unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that
shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from
all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance
with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which
presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and assumes to
itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius
itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent
words:

I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing
is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have
so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under
in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification
coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in
attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining
circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the
treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.

To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her
dislike of ordinary criticism.

Do not expect