ever, we understand, consented to make a
replica of it for Mr. Cross. We have not seen this interesting work, but we
hear that it is considered, by those who still remember the great writer as
she looked in her thirtieth year, to be remarkably faithful. M. Durade
recently exhibited this little picture for a few days at the Athenee in
Geneva, but has refused to allow it to be brought to London.

"Ten years after this, in 1859, as the distinguished portrait-painter, Mr.
Samuel Laurence, was returning from America, he happened to meet with 'Adam
Bede,' then just published. He was so delighted with the book that he was
determined to know the author, and it was revealed to him that to do so he
had but to renew his old acquaintance with Mr. George Henry Lewes, whom he
had met years before at Leigh Hunt's. He made George Eliot's acquaintance,
and was charmed with her, and before long he asked leave to make a study of
her head. She assented without any affectation, and, in the early months of
1861, Mr. Lewes commissioned the painter to make a drawing of her. She gave
him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr.
Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that
those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken
front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent,
and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her
if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at
once consented. But when the time for sending in drew near, the artist
received a letter from Mr. Lewes absolutely withholding this consent, and a
certain strain, of which this was the first symptom, began to embarrass the
relations of the two gentlemen, until Mr. Lewes finally refused to take the
drawing at all. But before the summer was out, Mr. Langford, the reader of
Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh, who published George Eliot's works, called
on Mr. Laurence, and asked if he would consent to make a copy of the
drawing for the firm. The artist replied that he should be happy to sell
them the original, and accordingly it passed from his studio, in June,
1861, into the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood's shop, where it now hangs.
Like that of M. Durade, Mr. Laurence's portrait of George Eliot is not to
be in any way reproduced.

"The remaining portrait is that which we reproduce with this number. It is
an elaborate chalk drawing, in black and w