that by force of circumstances it was for many years a marriage to which the law refused its sanction, though in every other respect a true, pure, honorable union—a union which demanded from both the parties high courage and faith in each other to venture upon. If, however, marriage means anything more than a formula of words, theirs is one of the truest of marriages, which the legal ties that now unite them do not render one whit more binding.
Until she had passed the first buoyancy, brightness, and bloom of youth, Mrs. Lewes was unknown. The world never knew the girl Marian Evans; and what beauty, if any, she had ever possessed belonged not to the world’s George Eliot, for she is described by many as being positively homely; while even her friends and admirers soften the truth in loving phrase. The nearest approach to praise of her personal appearance which I have ever seen I find in a letter of Moncure D. Conway to The Round Table, in which he says: “What Margaret
