those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her
disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and
artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent,
while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we
find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, "had the
unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum
in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did
not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles
she held to be most 'necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed,
her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer,
with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was
never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living
witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her
was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human
weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt
judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out
of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she
was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility
of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would
even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect
upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she
tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of
self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with
which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend."

As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent
characteristic of Mrs. Lewes's mind than its great intellectual power. Her
sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost
excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her
sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint