The great minds which Miss Evans met made life a constant joy, though she was frail in health.  Now Herbert Spencer took her to hear William Tell or the Creation.  She wrote of him:  “We have agreed that we are not in love with each other, and that there is no reason why we should not have as much of each other’s society as we like.  He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him....  My brightest spot, next to my love of old friends, is the deliciously calm, new friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me.  We see each other every day, and have a delightful camaraderie in everything.  But for him my life would be desolate enough.”

There is no telling what this happy friendship might have resulted in, if Mr. Spencer had not introduced to Miss Evans, George Henry Lewes, a man of brilliant conversational powers, who had written a History of Philosophy, two novels, Ranthorpe, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a contributor to several reviews.  Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a newspaper, and unsuccessful in his domestic relations.

That he loved Miss Evans is not strange; that she admired him, while she pitied him and his three sons in their broken home-life, is perhaps not strange.  At first she did not like him, nor did Margaret Fuller, but Miss Evans says:  “Mr. Lewes is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation.  Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems.  A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy.”

Miss Evans tired of her hard work, as who does not in this working world?  “I am bothered to death,” she writes, “with article-reading and scrap-work of all sorts; it is clear my poor head will never produce anything under these circumstances; but I am patient....  I had a long call from George Combe yesterday.  He says he thinks the Westminster under my management the most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence; the Edinburgh, under Jeffrey, nothing to it, etc.  I wish I thought so too.”

Sick with continued headaches, she went up to the English lakes to visit Miss Martineau.  The coach, at half-past six in the evening, stopped at “The Knoll,” and a beaming face came to welcome her.  During the evening, she says, “Miss Martineau came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way, telling me she was so glad she had got me here.”

Meantime Miss Evans was writing learned and valuable articles on Taxation, Woman in France, Evangelical Teaching, etc.  She received five hundred dollars yearly from her father’s estate, but she lived simply, that she might spend much of this for poor relations.

In 1854 she resigned her position on the Westminster, and went with Mr. Lewes to Germany, forming a union which thousands who love her must regard as the great mistake of a very great life.