region of beauty she was never content with any but definite
impressions. In one place in these volumes, by the way, she makes a
remark curiously inconsistent with the usual scientific attitude of her
mind. She has been reading Darwin's _Origin of Species_, on which she
makes the truly astonishing criticism that it is 'sadly wanting in
illustrative facts,' and that 'it is not impressive from want of
luminous and orderly presentation' (ii. 43-48). Then she says that 'the
development theory, and all other explanation of processes by which
things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery
that lies under processes.' This position it does not now concern us to
discuss, but at least it is in singular discrepancy with her strong
habitual preference for accurate and quantitative knowledge, over vague
and misty moods in the region of the unknowable and the unreachable.

George Eliot's means of access to books were very full. She knew French,
German, Italian, and Spanish accurately. Greek and Latin, Mr. Cross
tells us, she could read with thorough delight to herself; though after
the appalling specimen of Mill's juvenile Latinity that Mr. Bain has
disinterred, the fastidious collegian may be sceptical of the
scholarship of prodigies. Hebrew was her favourite study to the end of
her days. People commonly supposed that she had been inoculated with an
artificial taste for science by her companion. We now learn that she
took a decided interest in natural science long before she made Mr.
Lewes's acquaintance, and many of the roundabout pedantries that
displeased people in her latest writings, and were set down to his
account, appeared in her composition before she had ever exchanged a
word with him.

All who knew her well enough were aware that she had what Mr. Cross
describes as 'limitless persistency in application.' This is an old