The alembic of her mind
seemed to have the secret of distilling from traditions, which in
their grossness the ordinary visitor turns from with a smile of
contempt, the spiritual value they once possessed for ages of faith,
or at least the poetry with which the simple belief of those ages has
invested them. Nobody could be more alive to every aspect of natural
beauty than she showed herself during the whole of this memorable
excursion. But at La Vernia the human interest over-rode the simply
aesthetic one.

Her day was a most fatiguing one. And when Lewes and I wearily climbed
the hill on foot, after escorting her to her sleeping quarters, he was
not a little anxious lest on the morrow she should find herself unable
for the ride which was to take us to the spot where a carriage was
available for our return to Florence.

But it was not so. She slept well under the care of the Franciscan
nuns, who managed to get her a cup of milkless coffee in the morning,
and so save her from the necessity of again climbing the hill. A
charming drive through the Casentino, or valley of the Upper Arno,
showing us the aspect of a Tuscan valley very different from that
of the Lower Arno, brought to an end an expedition which has always
remained in my memory as one of the most delightful of my life.

I had much talk with George Eliot during the time--very short at
Florence--when she was maturing her Italian novel, _Romola_. Of
course, I knew that she was digesting the acquisitions of each day
with a view to writing; but I had not the slightest idea of the period
to which her inquiries were specially directed, or of the nature of
the work intended. But when I read _Romola_, I was struck by the
wonderful power of absorption manifested in every page of it. The
rapidity with which she squeezed out the essence and significance of a
most complex period of history, and assimilated the net results of its
many-sided phases, was truly marvellous.

Nevertheless, in drawing the girl Romola, her subjectivity has
overpowered her objectivity. Romola is not--could never have been--the
product of the period and of the civilisation from which she is
described as having issued. There is far too much of George Eliot in
her. It was a period, it is true, in which female culture trod upon
the heels of the male culture of the time perhaps more closely than it
has ever done since. But let Vittoria Colonna be accepted, as probably
she may be, as a fair exponent o