unjust. It may have been an error of judgment on their part; but, so far as appears, no inconveniences resulted from their action. Even those who disapproved made charitable allowance for the peculiarities of the case, and others felt that what George Eliot deliberately concluded to be right could not be wrong.
In Adam Bede, her first long novel, George Eliot had left Warwickshire, and sought her scene in Derbyshire, the ancient home of her ancestors. In Adam himself, as in Caleb Garth, she depicts some of her father's traits of character, while Dinah Morris, though by no means, as has been claimed, an exact portrait, was undoubtedly suggested by her aunt, Elizabeth Evans. This lady was a Methodist, and had been a preacher; she was sweet and gentle in manner, and possessed the clear grey eyes and pleasant voice attributed by the great novelist to Dinah. She used to hold long conversations with her niece, and on one occasion related how she had converted a young woman who was in prison for the crime of child-murder. The woman was hardened, ordinary, and uninteresting, she said, and she entered into no details regarding the matter. From this simple incident arose Hetty and Dinah, and that marvelous scene in the prison. Other portions of the book have also their foundation in life—the death of Adam's father, for example—but in all a mere hint has sufficed, and she has not sought to retain the actual details. Many people, however, insisted that she was much more indebted to her aunt than this; and, of one of their most frequent assertions, she writes to her friend, Miss Hennell:
"How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers, and speeches were copied, when they were written, with hot tears, as they surged up in my own mind!"
Her next book, issued in April, 1860, was "The Mill
