.
At the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world
have been written with the hope of getting money for them."

"My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a
greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute
sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be
faithful to coming duties."

For _Scenes of Clerical Life_ she received six hundred dollars for the
first edition, and much more after her other books appeared.

And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind, _Adam
Bede_, the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her
aunt, Elizabeth Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant
girl had murdered her child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans,
who was a Methodist preacher, stayed with her all night, praying with
her, and at last she burst into tears and confessed her crime.
Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and
ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.

When the first pages of _Adam Bede_ were shown to Mr. Blackwood,
he said, "That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich,
Dresden, and Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the
book in this time. When it was finished, she wrote on the manuscript,
_Jubilate_. "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of
a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which
his love has conferred on my life."

For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright
for four years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were
talking about it. John Murray said there had never been such a book.
Charles Reade said, putting his finger on Lisbeth's account of her
coming home with her husband from their marriage, "the finest thing
since Shakespeare." A workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my
boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on
us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am
sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton said, in the House of Commons: "As the
farmer's wife says in _Adam Bede_, 'It wants to be hatched over again
and hatched different.'" This of course greatly helped to popularize
the book.

To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest gratitude. They
were able now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once.
The poverty and the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my
magnificat in a