She deliberately married a man of genius,
whom she recognised as destined to make a heavy mark on his age. She had
her man of genius, and he put his life into his books. And what a life!
And what books! The sufficient answer to all the Watkinson tribe is to
point to Carlyle's thirty volumes. This is the man. Such work implies
a certain martyrdom, and those who stood beside him should not have
complained so lustily that they were scorched by the fire. Carlyle did a
giant's work, and he had a right to some failings. Freethinkers see them
as well as Mr. Watkinson, but they are aware that no man is perfect,
and they do not hold up Carlyle, or any other sceptic, as a model for
universal imitation.

Mr. Watkinson's remarks on George Eliot are simply brutal. She was a
"wanton." She "lived in free-love with George Henry Lewes." She had
no excuse for her "license." She was "full of insincerity, cant, and
hypocrisy." And so on _ad nauseam_. To call Mr. Watkinson a liar would
be to descend to his level. Let us simply look at the facts. George
Eliot lived with George Henry Lewes as his wife. She had no vagrant
attachments. Her connection with Lewes only terminated with his death.
Why then did they not marry? Because Lewes's wife was still living, and
the pious English law would not allow a divorce unless all the household
secrets were dragged before a gaping public. George Eliot consulted her
own heart instead of social conventions. She became a mother to
Lewes's children, and a true wife to him, though neither a priest nor a
registrar blessed their union. She chose between the law of custom
and the higher law, facing the world's frown, and relying on her own
strength to bear the consequences of her act. To call such a woman a
wanton and a kept mistress is to confess one's self devoid of sense and
sensibility. Nor does it show much insight to assert that "infidelity
betrayed and wrecked her life," and to speculate how glorious it might
have been if she had "found Jesus." It will be time enough to listen
to this strain when Mr. Watkinson can show us a more "glorious" female
writer in the Christian camp.

William Godwin is the next Freethinker whom Mr. Watkinson calls up for
judgment. All the brave efforts of the author of _Political Justice_
in behalf of freedom and progress are quietly ignored. Mr. Watkinson
comments, in a true vein of Christian charity, on the failings of his
old age, censures his theoretical disrespect for the m