Who shall doubt that it is well with the dear, kind soul who planted the thousand trees which delighted us this day, nodding their graceful boughs in genial welcome to the strangers and forming a triumphal arch in their honor.
Coventry, June 24.
George Eliot.
Coventry in these days has a greater than Godiva. George Eliot stands alone among women; no second near that throne. We visited the little school-room where she learnt her first lessons; but more than that, the Mayor, who kindly conducted us through the city, introduced us to a man who had been her teacher. "I knew the strange little thing well," he said. A proud privilege indeed! I would have given much to know George Eliot, for many reasons. I heard with something akin to fellowship that she longed to be at every symphony, oratorio, or concert of classical music, and rarely was that strong, brooding face missed at such feasts. Indeed, it was through attending one of these that she caught the cold which terminated fatally. Music was a passion with her, as she found in it calm and peace for the troubled soul tossed and tried by the sad, sad things of life. I understand this. A friend told me that a lady friend of hers, who was staying at the hotel in Florence where George Eliot was, made her acquaintance casually without knowing her name. Something, she knew not what, attracted her to her, and after a few days she began sending flowers to the strange woman. Completely fascinated, she went almost daily for hours to sit with her. This continued for many days, the lady using the utmost freedom, and not without feeling that the attention was pleasing to the queer, plain, and unpretending Englishwoman. One day she discovered by chance who her companion really was. Never before, as she said, had she felt such mortification. She went timidly to George Eliot's room and took her hand in hers, but shrank back unable to speak, while the tears rolled down her cheeks. "What is wrong?" was asked, and then the explanation came. "I didn't know who you were. I never suspected it was you!" Then came George Eliot's turn to be embarrassed. "You did not know I was George Eliot, but you were drawn to plain me all for my own self, a woman? I am so happy!" She kissed the American lady tenderly, and the true friendship thus formed knew no end, but ripened to the close.
The finest thing not in her works that I know this genius to have said is this: Standing one day leaning upon the mantel she remarked: "I can imagine the coming of a day when the effort to relieve human beings in distress will be as involuntary upon the part of the beholder as to clasp this mantel would be this moment on my part were I about to fall." There's an ideal for you! Christ might have said that.
The state here imagined is akin to her friend Herbert Spencer's grand paragraph.
"Conscientiousness has in many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him; but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it, and is indeed impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it." Who is going to cloud the horizon of the future of our race with traitor-doubts when already, in our own day, amid much which saddens us, the beams of a brighter sun, herald of a better day, already touch the mountain tops, for such are this woman and this man towering above their fellows. By and by these beams will reach the lesser heights—and anon, the very plains will be transformed by them, and
"Man to man the world o'er shall brothers be,
And a' that."