“I don’t think I ever told you how very much your History of Florence interested me.  I am shockingly ignorant of the subject, and not at all competent to speak, except as one of the public; but you made the political life of the people clear to me.  I only regretted here and there a newspaper style which was not historic.  Oscar Browning has sent me his review, but I have not read it yet.  It is at the printers.  Polly sends her love.

“Ever faithfully yours,

“G.H.L.”

* * * * *

He writes again, dating his letter 1st January, 1866, but post-marked 1865.  It is singular, that the date as given by the writer, 1866, must have been right, and that given by the post-mark, 1865, wrong.  And the fact may possibly some day be useful to some counsel having to struggle against the evidence of a post-mark.  The letter commences:—­

* * * * *

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—­A happy new year to you and Bice!

[It is quite impossible that Lewes could have so written, while my wife, Theodosia, so great a favourite with both him and his wife, and so constantly inquired for tenderly by them, was yet alive.  I lost her on the 13th of April, 1865.  It is certain therefore, that Lewes’s letter was written in 1866, and not as the post-mark declares in 1865.  After speaking of some literary business matters, the letter goes on:—­]

“And when am I to receive those articles from you, which you projected?  I suppose other work keeps you ever on the stretch.  But so active a man must needs ‘fulfil himself in many ways.’

“We have been ailing constantly without being ill, but our work gets on somehow or other.  Polly is miserable over a new novel, and I am happy over the very hard work of a new edition of my History of Philosophy, which will almost be a new book, so great are the changes and additions.  Polly sends her love to you and Bice.

“Yours very faithfully,

“G.H.  LEWES.”

* * * * *

Then after a long break, and after a new phase of my life had commenced, Lewes writes on the 14th of January, 1869, from “21, North Bank":—­

* * * * *

“DEAR T.T.,—­We did not meet in Germany because our plans were altogether changed.  We passed all the time in the Black Forest, and came home through the Oberland.  I did write to Salzburg however, and perhaps the letter is still there; but there was nothing in it.

“You know how fond we are of you, and the pleasure it always gives us to get a glimpse of you. (Not that we have not also very pleasant associations with your wife,[1] but she is as yet stranger to us of course.) But we went away in search of complete repose.  And in the Black Forest there was not a soul to speak to, and we liked it so much as to stay on there.

[Footnote 1:  I had married my second wife on the 29th of October, 1866.]