After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political economy, Felix Holt was written, in 1866, and for this she received from Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.

Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of her books, which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for rest.

In 1868 she published her long poem, The Spanish Gypsy, reading Spanish literature carefully, and finally passing some time in Spain, that she might be the better able to make a lasting work.  Had she given her life to poetry, doubtless she would have been a great poet.

Silas Marner, written before Romola, in 1861, had been well received, and Middlemarch, in 1872, made a great sensation.  It was translated into several languages.  George Bancroft wrote her from Berlin that everybody was reading it.  For this she received a much larger sum than the thirty-five thousand which she was paid for Romola.

A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of pleasure grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and flowers about her house.  “Sunlight and sweet air,” she said, “make a new creature of me.” Daniel Deronda followed in 1876, for which, it is said, she read nearly a thousand volumes.  Whether this be true or not, the list of books given in her life, of her reading in these later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for any who desire real knowledge.

At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few friends like the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady Holland.  Both were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor health.  Finally, after a ten days’ illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.

To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable.  She needed his help and his affection.  She said, “I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved,” and he had idolized her.  He said:  “I owe Spencer a debt of gratitude.  It was through him that I learned to know Marian,—­to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been a new birth.  To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness.  God bless her!”

Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need.  A George Henry Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory of the man she had loved.  “I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake,” she said.  She grew despondent, and the Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.

Mr. Cross’ mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting.  They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found that his heart was deeply interested.  It was the higher kind of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.