re a disease of English
literature.

"I have never yet told you how grateful I was to you for writing to me
a year ago. For a long while I could read no letter. But now I have
read yours more than once, and it is carefully preserved. You had been
with us in our happiness so near the time when it left me--you and
your husband are peculiarly bound up with the latest memories.

"You must have had a mournful summer. But Mr. Trollope's thorough
recovery from his severe attack is a fresh proof of his constitutional
strength. We cannot properly count age by years. See what Mr.
Gladstone does with seventy of them in his frame. And my lost one had
but sixty-one and a half.

"You are to come to England again in 1881, I remember, and then, if I
am alive, I hope to see you. With best love to you both, always, dear
Mrs. Trollope,

"Yours faithfully,

"M.E. LEWES."

* * * * *

The "words of Dr. Haller," to which the above letter refers, were to
the effect that one of Lewes's great advantages in scientific and
philosophical research was his familiar acquaintance with the works
of German and French writers, which enabled him to follow the
contemporaneous movement of science throughout Europe, whereas many
writers of learning and ability wasted their own and their readers'
time in investigating questions already fully investigated elsewhere,
and advancing theories which had been previously proved or disproved
without their knowledge. Dr. Ludwig Haller, of Berlin, in writing to
me about G.H. Lewes, then recently deceased, had said, if I remember
rightly, that he had some intention of publishing a sketch of Lewes in
some German periodical. I am not aware whether this intention was ever
carried into effect.

The attack to which the above letter alludes was a very bad one
of sciatica. At length the baths of Baden in Switzerland cured me
permanently, but after their--it is said ordinary and normal, but very
perverse--fashion, having first made me incomparably worse. I suffered
excruciatingly, consolingly (!) assured by the doctor that sciatica
never kills--only makes you wish that it would! While I was at the
worst my brother came to Baden to see me, and on leaving me after
a couple of days, wrote to my wife the following letter, which I
confiscated and keep as a memorial.

After expressing his commiseration for me, he continues:--

"For you, I cannot tell you the admiration I have for you. Your