The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-01-28

 able woman has said that mot the least striking feature of her remarkable career was that at the time of her death scarcely more was known of George Eliot than is known about Shakespeare. At time when public curiosity invades and lays bare the most secret places in the private lives of those who challenge its atten- ton, she maintained from first to last a reserve so complete as almost to oblit- crate her personality"
 "The intimate life was the care of the root from which sprung the fairest flow CTS of her inspiration. Fame came to her late in life, and when it presented itself, was so weighted with the sense of respon- sibility that 1t was in truth rose with many thorns, for she had the tempera- ment that shrinks from the position of public character. The belief in the wide and bene1cent effect of her writing was no doubt the highest happiness. the re- ward of the artist which she greatly cher ished. but the joys of the hearth-side, the delight in the love of her friends were the supreme pleasures of her life Hers was a large, slow-growing nature-there seems to have been nothing of the infant phe- nomenon about her. We are told that she learned to read with some difficulty. Not so much from any slowness of compre- hension but because she liked playing so much better.
 In her moral development she showed from the earliest years the trait that was most marked in her through life. namely the absolute need of some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections and easily moved to tears or smiles, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment and the keenest suffering, knowing all the wealth and all the woe of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition"
 When she was a tiny tot she lavished all her love on her brother, three years older than herself, being always at his heels and insisting on doing everything he did. And as she grew older her af- fectionate nature fastened itself on one and another of the friends who inevitably were drawn to respond to such wealth of anection.
 This craving for love--the exclusive love and care of some one above all, Is the ob- vious justification for her marriage with MT. Cross so soon after her life had 'been broken" as she herself phrased 1t. by the death of her souls affinity and life com panion, MT. Dewes. her connection with whom, unsanetioned by the legal tie, was the one disfigurng blot on a life which otherwise we must venerate and admire.
 Her union with MT. Lewes, much as 1t has been deplored, was unquestionably justified in her own eyes by the eircum- stances, and must be if not condoned, at least atoned for from a professional point of view by the resultant broadening and deepening of her life and experience leading finally. by his sympathy and en- couragement-his urgency even-to the production of those marvellous books without which our literature would be so impoverished.
 Many years later when in Felix Holt she wrote the following, 1t was no doubt an echo from her own experience. "A su- preme love, motive that gives a sub lime rhythm to a woman's life and eXalts habit into partnership with the souls highest needs Is not to be had where and how she wills; to know that high Inclination she must often tread where 1t is hard to tread, and feel the chill air and watch through darkness It Is not true that love makes all things easy 1t makes us choose what is difficult"
 She writes to a friend later "I am very happy-happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the perfect love and sympa- thy of a nature that stimulates my own to healthful activity. I feel too, that all the terrible pain I have gone through in past years, partly from defects in my own nature. partly from outward things has probably been preparation for some special work that I may do before I die That Is a blessed hope, to be rejoiced in with trembling. But even if that hope should be unfulfilled, l am contented to have lived and suffered for the sake of what already has been. If I live five years longer. the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that would have consisted in not doing anything to shock others-and 1 can conceive of no consequences that will make me repent the past Do not misun- derstand me and suppose I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from thati Faulty miserably faulty I am, but least of all faulty where others most blame"
 She was so eminently human and of such wide sympathy that these very char acteristics gave her power to voice such large and wholesome philosophy of life as is to be found in everything she writes She says somewhere in one of her letters: Whatever tends to render us Ill., contented with ourselves and more earn est aspirants after perfect truth and god ness in gold, though 1t come to us all molten and burning and we know not our treasure until we have had long smartlng.
 All the sweet and peace breathing sights
 
 thoughts of the good and the great are an inexhaustibe world of delght-and the felt desire to be one in will and design with the great mind that has laid open to us these treasures Is the sun that warns and fructihes it.
 'I am more and more impressed with the duty of finding happiness. This Is a world of bliss and beauty-that Is, bliss and beauty are the end. the tendency of ereation-and evils are the shadows that are the only conditions of light in the picture"
 Even when sickness comes into the household, she can find a source of growth and upllft in "the twilight and tip-toe stiffness of the sick room. with It's help full activities and then, when the solemn hand of death is laid upon one of it's inmates, she writes to a friend tour stock of appreciated good can never be really diminished. When the chief desire of the eyes Is taken. we can afford gaze to hitherto unnoticed possessions and even when the topmost boughs are Tapped. thousand shoots spring from below, with the energy of new life. It would not be well for us to overleap one grade of joy or suffering, our life would lose its completeness and beauty
 "I hope to dlsprove Youngs theory that "as soon as We have found the key of life. it opes the gates of death."
 'I think Live and Teach should be a proverb as well as Live and Learn We must teach, either for good or evil, and If we use our inward light, as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and trim 1t well, our teaching must in the end, be for good