ith rare perception--than from an easy
intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she
worked out _thoroughly_ what she knew by the intuition of genius, though
in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the "Spanish
Gypsy," having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she
told me that in order to write "Daniel Deronda," she had read through two
hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned
Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my
friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal
of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim _by the corners
of their eyes_!

I had read more than once Lewes's "Life of Goethe," his "History of
Philosophy and Physiology," and even "written him" for the Cyclopaedia.
With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here
that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really
a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect
always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as "frivolous
and atheistic." I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined
somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a
cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, who was
there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of
nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of
archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century
tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe
formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de
Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by
describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He
declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of
impudence!

"A hundred jests have passed between us twain,
Which, had I space, I'd gladly tell again."

A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle
Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I
made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave
me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards'
studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait
on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of
the same ki