and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul.  Like so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, arguments and reasons.  She knew only nature and man; inspiration, revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her.  Yet she believed most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation.  Religion was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of feeling.  To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true interpretation of the soul’s wants, at the same time that she totally rejected it as fact and dogma.

In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist him in the editorship of the Westminster Review, Chapman had been the publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the way to the continent the year before.  He was the publisher of a large number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and radical sentiment of the time.  The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, appeared on his list.  The Westminster Review was devoted to scientific and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, Lewes and Miss Martineau.  It was carefully edited, had an able list of contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a wide circle of readers.  It gave careful reviews of books, and had able departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries.  Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in writing special book reviews.  Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide reading and patient effort.  Her position brought her the acquaintance of a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women.  Under this influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of the ablest among them.  Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was “distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which have since made her known to all the world.”  We are told by another that “her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression on all who wore thrown into her society.”

Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors.  She was extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies.  A fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the Review was held in Mr. Chapman’s house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time.  Harriet Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke.  She visited George Combe and his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return.