time she had become a remarkably well-educated
woman, of great conversational powers, interesting because of her
intelligence, brightness, and sensibility, but not for her personal
beauty. In fact, she was not merely homely, she was even ugly; though
many admirers saw great beauty in her eyes and expression when her
countenance was lighted up. She was unobtrusive and modest, and retired
within herself.

At this period she translated from the German the "Life of Jesus," by
Strauss, Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity," and one of Spinoza's
works. Why should a young woman have selected such books to translate?
How far the writings of rationalistic and atheistic philosophers
affected her own views we cannot tell; but at this time her progressive
and advanced opinions irritated and grieved her father, so that, as we
are told, he treated her with intolerant harshness. With all her
paganism, however, she retained the sense of duty, and was devoted in
her attentions to her father until he died, in 1849. She then travelled
on the Continent with the Brays, seeing most of the countries of Europe,
and studying their languages, manners, and institutions. She resided
longest in a boarding-house near Geneva, amid scenes renowned by the
labors of Gibbon, Voltaire, and Madame de Stael, in sight of the Alps,
absorbed in the theories of St. Simon and Proudhon,--a believer in the
necessary progress of the race as the result of evolution rather than of
revelation or revolution.

Miss Evans returned to England about the year 1857,--the year of the
Great Exhibition,--and soon after became sub-editor of the "Westminster
Review," at one time edited by John Stuart Mill, but then in charge of
John Chapman, the proprietor, at whose house, in the Strand, she
boarded. There she met a large circle of literary and scientific men of
the ultra-liberal, radical school, those who looked upon themselves as
the more advanced thinkers of the age, whose aim was to destroy belief
in supernaturalism and inspiration; among whom were John Stuart Mill,
Francis Newman, Herbert Spencer, James Anthony Froude, G.H. Lewes, John
A. Roebuck, and Harriet Martineau,--dreary theorists, mistrusted and
disliked equally by the old Whigs and Tories, high-churchmen, and
evangelical Dissenters; clever thinkers and learned doubters, but
arrogant, discontented, and defiant.

It was then that the friendly attachment between Miss Evans and Mr.
Lewes began, which ripened into lov