The health of Mrs. Lewes was never good. She was a constant sufferer, was
nervous, excitable and low-spirited. Only by the utmost care and husbanding
of her powers was she enabled to accomplish her work. In a note to one of
her correspondents she has given some hint of the almost chronic languor
and bodily weakness from which she suffered.

The weather, our ailments, and various other causes, have made us put
off our flight from one week to another, but now we are really
fluttering our wings and making a dust about us. I wish we had seen you
oftener. I was placidly looking forward to your staying in England
another year or more, and gave way to my general languor about seeing
friends in these last months, which have been too full of small bodily
miseries for me to feel that I had much space to give to pleasanter
occupation.

Only those who knew her long and well can fitly describe such a woman as
Mrs. Lewes. Personal intimacy gives a color to the words used, and a
meaning to the delicate shades of expression, that can be had in no other
way. One of her friends has described her as being of "the middle height,
the head large, the brow ample, the lower face massive; the eyes gray,
lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance
sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general
demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but
somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were
in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness,
into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of
her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both
sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features
were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly
impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has
spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her
description of that monk-prophet in _Romola_. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she
also resembled Dante and Cardinal Newman, and that these four were of the
same spiritual family, with a curious interdependence of likeness. All
these persons have "the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the
powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely
under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it