f her
intelligence; the precision, the promptitude, the rapidity (though
her manner was by no means rapid), the largeness of the field of
knowledge, the compressed outcome of which she was at any moment ready
to bring to bear on the topic in hand; the sureness and lucidity
of her induction; the clearness of vision, to which muddle was as
impossible and abhorrent as a vacuum is supposed to be to nature; and
all this lighted up and gilded by an infinite sense of, and capacity
for, humour,--this was what rendered her to me a marvel, and an object
of inexhaustible study and admiration.

To me, though I never passed half an hour in conversation with her
without a renewed perception of the vastness of the distance which
separated her intelligence from mine, she was a companion each minute
of intercourse with whom was a delight. But I can easily understand
that, despite her perfect readiness to place herself for the nonce on
the intellectual level of those with whom she chanced to be brought in
contact, her society may not have been agreeable to all. I remember a
young lady--by no means a stupid or unintelligent one--telling me that
being with George Eliot always gave her a pain in "her mental neck,"
just as an hour passed in a picture gallery did to her physical neck.
She was fatigued by the constant attitude of looking up. But had she
not been an intelligent girl, she need not have constantly looked up.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that George Eliot's mental
habits exacted such an attitude from those she conversed with.

Another very prominent and notable characteristic of that most
remarkable idiosyncrasy was the large and almost universal tolerance
with which George Eliot regarded her fellow creatures. Often and
often has her tone of mind reminded me of the French saying, "_Tout
connaitre ce serait tout pardonner!_" I think that of all the human
beings I have ever known or met George Eliot would have made the most
admirable, the most perfect father confessor. I can conceive nothing
more healing, more salutary to a stricken and darkened soul, than
unrestricted confession to such a mind and such an intelligence as
hers. Surely a Church with a whole priesthood of such confessors would
produce a model world.

And with all this I am well persuaded that her mind was at that time
in a condition of growth. Her outlook on the world could not have
been said at that time to have been a happy one. And my subsequent
acqua