e result of a conscious purpose on the
part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when
gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of
Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from
the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate
friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was
indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris.

HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850.

Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to
tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt,
Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life
with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six
or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here
omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.]

As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any
interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one
sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy
girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution,
and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among
the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her
account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only
remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital.
Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she
was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my
mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my
mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ
of _Adam Bede_.

I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my
father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our
interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less
simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to
see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some
pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude
state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This
is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear
aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested