She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary
preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her
power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her
books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of
shunning criticism:


MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the
wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you
are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and
stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them.

Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads
them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they
show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has
carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind
letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited
in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I
register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what
I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing.

Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise
than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in
life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most
satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an
elder mind with a younger.

The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type
both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which
is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done.