If ever the admirably epigrammatic phrase, "wax to receive and marble to retain," was applicable to any human mind, it was so to that of George Eliot.

And not only were the enormous accumulations of stored-up impressions safe beyond reach of oblivion or confusion, but they were all and always miraculously ready for co-ordination with those newly coming in at each passing moment! Think of the delight of passing, in companionship with such a mind, through scenes and circumstances entirely new to it! Lewes, too, was a most delightful companion, the cheeriest of philosophers! The old saying of "_Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est_," was especially applicable to him.

Though very exhaustible in bodily force, he was inexhaustible in cheerfulness, and above all in unwearied, incessant, and minute care for "Polly." In truth, if any man could ever be said to have lived in another person, Lewes in those days, and to the end of his life, lived in and for George Eliot.

The talk of worshipping the ground she trod on, and the like, are pretty lovers phrases, sometimes signifying much, and sometimes very little.
But it is true accurately and literally of Lewes.

That care for her, at once comprehensive and minute, unsleeping watchfulness, lest she should dash her foot against a stone, was _never_ absent from his mind.