George Eliot no doubt met with it in some of those old chroniclers who wrote exactly as not only the lower orders, but the generality of their fellow citizens, were speaking around them.

And her use of it testifies to the minuteness of her care to reproduce the form and pressure of the time of which she was writing.] "Once more thank you, though my gratitude is in danger of looking too much like a lively sense of anticipated favours, for I mean to ask you to take other trouble yet.
"Yours very truly, "MARION E.LEWES." * * * * * The following letter, written from Blandford Square on the 5th July, 1861, is, as regards the first three pages, from him, and the last from her.
* * * * * "MY DEAR TROLLOPE,--We have now read _La Beata_ [my first novel], and must tell you how charmed we have been with it.

_Nina_ herself is perfectly exquisite and individual, and her story is full of poetry and pathos.

Also one feels a breath from the Val d'Arno rustling amid the pages, and a sense of Florentine life, such as one rarely gets out of books.

The critical objection I should make to it, apart from minor points, is that often you spoil the artistic attitude by adopting a critical antagonistic attitude, by which I mean that instead of painting the thing objectively, you present it critically, _with an eye to the opinions_ likely to be formed by certain readers; thus, instead of relying on the simple presentation of the fact of Nina's innocence you _call up_ the objection you desire to anticipate by side glances at the worldly and 'knowing' reader's opinions.