These persons gave her the encouragement she needed, the contact with other and more matured minds which was so necessary to her mental development, and that social contact with life which was so conducive to her health of mind.  In one family especially, that of Mr. Charles Bray, did she find the true, and cordial, and appreciative friendship she desired.  These friends softened the growing discord with her own family, and gave her that devoted regard and aid that would be of most service to her.  “In Mr. Bray’s family,” we are told by one who has written of this trying period of her career, “she found sympathy with her ardent love of knowledge and with the more enlightened views that had begun to supplant those under which (as she described it) her spirit had been grievously burdened.  Emerson, Froude, George Combe, Robert Mackay, and many other men of mark, were at various times guests at Mr. Bray’s house at Rosehill while Miss Evans was there either as inmate or occasional visitor; and many a time might have been seen, pacing up and down the lawn or grouped under an old acacia, men of thought and research, discussing all things in heaven and earth, and listening with marked attention when one gentle woman’s voice was heard to utter what they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips opened.  Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine auditor.  One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar charm to her conversation.  She had no petty egotism, no spirit of contradiction; she never talked for effect.  A happy thought well expressed filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and improve upon it—­so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and surprise, of the good things they had said.”

She was an ardent reader of Emerson and other thinkers of his cast of thought, and some traces of this early sympathy are to be seen in her books.  On his second visit to England Emerson spent a day or two at the house of Charles Bray, with whose writings he had previously become acquainted.  Emerson was much impressed with the personality of Marian Evans, and more than once said to Bray, “That young lady has a calm, serious soul.”  When Emerson asked her somewhat suddenly, “What one book do you like best?” she at once replied, “Rousseau’s Confessions.”  She cherished this acquaintance with Emerson, and held him in grateful remembrance through life.

The painful experiences of this period are undoubtedly reflected in another of her autobiographic poems, that entitled “Self and Life.”  She speaks of the profound influence the past had over her mind, and that her hands and feet were still tiny when she began to know the historic thrill of contact with other ages.  She also makes Life say to Self, in regard to her pain and sorrow: