lt this same delight in
looking upon this picture, painted by nature?

Now Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as other famous people, visited the
Bray family. Miss Evans writes: "I have seen Emerson,--the first _man_
I have ever seen." High praise indeed from our "great, calm soul,"
as he called Miss Evans. "I am grateful for the Carlyle eulogium (on
Emerson). I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is
a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love
another."

Each evening she played on the piano to her admiring father, and
finally, through months of illness, carried him down tenderly to the
grave. He died May 31, 1849.

Worn with care, Miss Evans went upon the Continent with the Brays,
visiting Paris, Milan, the Italian lakes, and finally resting for some
months at Geneva'. As her means were limited, she tried to sell her
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ at half-price, so that she could have money
for music lessons, and to attend a course of lectures on experimental
physics, by the renowned Professor de la Rive. She was also carefully
reading socialistic themes, Proudhon, Rousseau, and others. She wrote
to friends: "The days are really only two hours long, and I have so
many things to do that I go to bed every night miserable because I
have left out something I meant to do.... I take a dose of mathematics
every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft."

On her return to England, she visited the Brays, and met Mr. Chapman,
the editor of the _Westminster Review_, and Mr. Mackay, upon whose
_Progress of the Intellect_ she had just written a review. Mr. Chapman
must have been deeply impressed with the learning and ability of Miss
Evans, for he offered her the position of assistant editor of the
magazine,--a most unusual position for a woman, since its contributors
were Froude, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and other able men.

Miss Evans accepted, and went to board with Mr. Chapman's family in
London. How different this from the quiet life at Foleshill! The best
society, that is, the greatest in mind, opened wide its doors to her.
Herbert Spencer, who had just published _Social Statics_, became one of
her best friends. Harriet Martineau came often to see her. Grote was
very friendly.

The woman-editor was now thirty-two; her massive head covered with
brown curls, blue-gray eyes, mobile, sympathetic mouth, strong
chin, pale face, and soft, low voice, like Dorothea's in
_Middlemarch_,--"the v