it has been taken.  Another thing also struck me.  The provincial dialect, which, when its peculiarities are indicated by letters, looks so uncouth as to be sometimes almost puzzling, seemed to produce no difficulty at all as he read it, though he in nowise mitigated it in the least.  It seemed the absolutely natural and necessary presentation of the thoughts and emotions to be rendered.  It was, in fact, a dramatic rendering of them of the highest order.

I remember with equal vividness hearing Lowell read some of his Biglow Papers in the drawing-room of my valued friend Arthur Dexter, of Boston, when there were no others present save him and his mother and my wife and myself.  And that also was a great treat; that also was the addition of colour to the black and white of the printed page.  But the difference between reading and hearing was not so great as in the case of the Laureate.

When, full of the delight that had been afforded us, we were taking our leave of him, our host laid on us his strict injunctions to say no word to any one of what we had heard, adding with a smile that was half naif, half funning, and wholly comic, “The newspaper fellows, you know, would get hold of the story, and they would not do it as well!”

And then our visit to the Lewes’s in their lovely home drew to an end, and we said our farewells, little thinking as we four stood in that porch, that we should never in this world look on their faces more.

The history of George Eliot’s intellect is to a great extent legible in her books.  But there are thousands of her readers in both hemispheres who would like to possess a more concrete image of her in their minds—­an image which should give back the personal peculiarities of face, voice, and manner, that made up her outward form and semblance.  I cannot pretend to the power of creating such an image; but I may record a few traits which will be set down at all events as truthfully as I can give them.

She was not, as the world in general is aware, a handsome, or even a personable woman.  Her face was long; the eyes not large nor beautiful in colour—­they were, I think, of a greyish blue—­the hair, which she wore in old-fashioned braids coming low down on either side of her face, of a rather light brown.  It was streaked with grey when last I saw her.  Her figure was of middle height, large-boned and powerful.  Lewes often said that she inherited from her peasant ancestors a frame and constitution originally very robust.  Her head was finely formed, with a noble and well-balanced arch from brow to crown.  The lips and mouth possessed a power of infinitely varied expression.  George Lewes once said to me when I made some observation to the effect that she had a sweet face (I meant that the face expressed great sweetness), “You might say what a sweet hundred faces!  I look at her sometimes in amazement.  Her countenance is constantly changing.”  The said lips and mouth were distinctly sensuous in form and fulness.