e and ended in a scandal. Mr. Lewes
was as homely as Wilkes, and was three years older than Miss Evans,--a
very bright, witty, versatile, learned, and accomplished man; a
brilliant talker, novelist, playwright, biographer, actor, essayist, and
historian, whose "Life of Goethe" is still the acknowledged authority in
Germany itself, as Carlyle's "Frederic the Great" is also regarded. But
his fame has since been eclipsed by that of the woman he pretended to
call his wife, and with whom (his legal wife being still alive) he lived
in open defiance of the seventh Commandment and the social customs of
England for twenty years. This unfortunate connection, which saddened
the whole subsequent life of Miss Evans, and tinged all her writings
with the gall of her soul, excluded her from that high conventional
society which it has been the aim of most ambitious women to enter. But
this exclusion was not, perhaps, so great an annoyance to Miss Evans as
it would have been to Hannah More, since she was not fitted to shine in
general society, especially if frivolous, and preferred to talk with
authors, artists, actors, and musical geniuses, rather than with
prejudiced, pleasure-seeking, idle patricians, who had such attractions
for Addison, Pope, Mackintosh, and other lights of literature, who
unconsciously encouraged that idolatry of rank and wealth which is one
of the most uninteresting traits of the English nation. Nor would those
fashionable people, whom the world calls "great," have seen much to
attract them in a homely and unconventional woman whose views were
discrepant with the established social and religious institutions of the
land. A class that would not tolerate such a genius as Carlyle, would
not have admired Marian Evans, even if the stern etiquette of English
life had not excluded her from envied and coveted _reunions_; and she
herself, doubtless, preferred to them the brilliant society which
assembled in Mr. Chapman's parlors to discuss those philosophical and
political theories of which Comte was regarded as the high-priest, and
his positivism the essence of all progressive wisdom.

How far the gloomy materialism and superficial rationalism of Lewes may
have affected the opinions of Miss Evans we cannot tell. He was her
teacher and constant companion, and she passed as his wife; so it is
probable that he strengthened in her mind that dreary pessimism which
appeared in her later writings. Certain it is that she paid the