“I am always yours, with lively remembrance,

“MARION E. LEWES.”

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It needed George Eliot’s fine and minute handwriting to put all this into one page of note-paper.

The next letter that came from Blandford Square, dated 9th December, 1861, was also a joint one, the larger portion of which however is from her pen.

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“DEAR GOOD PEOPLE,—­If your ears burn as often as you are talked about in this house, there must be an unpleasant amount of aural circulation to endure!  And as the constant refrain is, ’Really we must write to them, that they may not altogether slip away from us,’ I have this morning screwed my procrastination to the writing-desk.

“First and foremost let us know how you are, and what are the results of the bathing.  Then a word as to the new novel, or any other work, will be acceptable.  I lend about La Beata in all good quarters, and always hear golden opinions from all sorts of people.  Of course you hear from Anthony.

“Is he prosperous and enjoying his life?  The book will have an enormous sale just now; but I fancy he will find more animosity and less friendliness than he expected, to judge from the state of exasperation against the Britisher, which seems to be general.

“We have been pursuing the even baritone—­I wish I could say tenor—­of our way.  My health became seriously alarming in September, so we went off to Malvern for a fortnight; and there the mountain air, exercise, and regular diet set me up, so that I have been in better training for work than I had been for a long while.  Polly has not been strong, yet not materially amiss.  But as she will add a postscript to this I shall leave her to speak for herself.

“In your (T.A.T.) book huntings, if you could lay your hand on a copy of Hermolaus Barbarus, Compendium Scientiae Naturalis, 1553, or any of Telesio’s works, think of me and pounce on them.  I was going to bother you about the new edition of Galileo, but fortunately I fell in with the Milan edition cheap, and contented myself with that.  Do you know what there is new in the Florentine edition?  I suppose you possess it, as you do so many enviable books.

“We heard the other day that Miss Blagden had come to stay in London for the winter, so Polly sent a message to her to say how glad we should be to see her.  If she comes she will bring us some account of casa Trollope.  When you next pass Giotto’s tower salute it for me; it is one of my dearest Florentines, and always beckoning to us to come back.

“Ever your faithful friend,

“G.H.  LEWES.”

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She writes:—­

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