fashionable connections, says Mr. F.W.H.  Myers, “but nearly all who were most eminent in art, science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her Sunday-afternoon receptions.  There were many women, too, drawn often from among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes’s look and speech, and sometimes illumining with some fair young face a salon whose grave talk needed the grace which they could bestow.  And there was sure to be a considerable admixture of men not as yet famous,—­probably never to be so,—­but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to ’that hopeful interest which’—­to quote a letter of her own—­’the elder mind, dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.’  It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful bonhomie, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of any social group.  Mrs. Lewes’s manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best—­to establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor—­to utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the hearts of those who heard them.  To some of her literary admirers, this serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely for intellectual refreshment.  Mrs. Lewes’s humor, though fed from a deep perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk—­full of matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was—­there was the same pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those whose object was distinctively to learn from her, than to those who merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour.  To her, these mixed receptions were a great effort.  Her mind did not move easily from one individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her,—­had spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart,—­she would suffer from almost morbid accesses of self-reproach.”  A further idea of these conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul’s account.  “When London was full,” he says, “the little drawing-room in St. John’s Wood was now and then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said was worth hearing.  Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to some great and lofty strain.  Of herself and her works she never spoke; of the works and thoughts of others