penalty
of violating a fundamental moral law, in the neglect of those women
whose society she could have adorned, and possibly in the silent
reproaches of conscience, which she portrayed so vividly in the
characters of those heroines who struggled ineffectually in the conflict
between duty and passion. True, she accepted the penalty without
complaint, and labored to the end of her days, with masculine strength,
to enforce a life of duty and self-renunciation on her readers,--to live
at least for the good of humanity. Nor did she court notoriety, like
Georges Sand, who was as indifferent to reproach as she was to shame.
Miss Evans led a quiet, studious, unobtrusive life with the man she
loved, sympathetic in her intercourse with congenial friends, and
devoted to domestic duties. And Mr. Lewes himself relieved her from many
irksome details, that she might be free to prosecute her intense
literary labors.

In this lecture on George Eliot I gladly would have omitted all allusion
to a mistake which impairs our respect for this great woman. But defects
cannot be unnoticed in an honest delineation of character; and no candid
biographers, from those who described the lives of Abraham and David, to
those who have portrayed the characters of Queen Elizabeth and Oliver
Cromwell, have sought to conceal the moral defects of their subjects.

Aside from the translations already mentioned, the first literary
efforts of Miss Evans were her articles in the "Westminster Review," a
heavy quarterly, established to advocate philosophical radicalism. In
this Review appeared from her pen the article on Carlyle's "Life of
Sterling," "Madame de la Sabliere," "Evangelical Teachings," "Heine,"
"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," "The Natural History of German Life,"
"Worldliness and Unworldliness,"--all powerfully written, but with a
vein of bitter sarcasm in reference to the teachers of those doctrines
which she fancied she had outgrown. Her connection with the "Review"
closed in 1853, when she left Mr. Chapman's home and retired to a small
house in Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park, on a modest but independent
income. In 1854 she revisited the Continent with Mr. Lewes, spending her
time chiefly in Germany.

It was in 1857 that the first tales of Miss Evans were published in
"Blackwood's Magazine," when she was thirty-eight, in the full maturity
of her mind.

"The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton" was the first of the series called
"Scenes of Clerical L