death of Mr. Lewes. But the winter which followed her return to England was unusually rigorous, and she was unable to bear its severity. She died only two weeks after removing to her new home at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.
She lies buried in Highgate Cemetery, beside the grave of George Henry Lewes. Her funeral took place on a day of mist and rain; yet, in addition to the numerous friends, distinguished, most of them, in science, art, or philanthropy, who came to do her honor, there was gathered a crowd, quiet, orderly, and sorrowful, of people, friends also, who had never known her face or voice. All stood silent while the Unitarian service was concluded by her grave; then they slowly dispersed, each pausing a moment to look down upon the coffin covered with flowers.
If George Eliot's work in literature is of the highest, so, too, is her place as a friend and helper among men. No one reading her works can think of her as an artist merely, high and honorable although that title is. She is much more; she is that which she longed to be when she wrote the aspiration that closes her volume of poems :
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."
