Page:George Eliot (1904 Mathilde Blind Real).djvu/74

gone things. A garden where roses and cab- bages jostle each other, where vegetables have to make room for gnarled old apple-trees, and where, amid the raspberry bushes and row of currant trees, you expect to come upon Hetty herself, " stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit." Such was the place where the childhood of George Eliot was spent. Here she drew in those impressions of English rural and pro- vincial life, of which one day she was to be- come the greatest interpreter. Impossible to be in a better position for seeing life. Not only was her father's position always im- proving, so that she was early brought in contact with different grades of society, but his calling made him more or less acquainted with all ranks of his neighbors, and, says George Eliot, " I have always thought that the most fortunate Britons are those whose experience has given them a practical share in many aspects of the national lot, who have lived long among the mixed commonalty, roughing it with them under difficulties, knowing how their food tastes to them, and getting acquainted with their notions and mo- tives, not by inference from traditional types in literature, or from philosophical theories, but from daily fellowship and observation."