In and after 1876, when I was in the habit of walking from the north-west of London towards Whitehall, I met several times, driven slowly homewards, a victoria which contained a strange pair in whose appearance I took a vi-olent interest. The man, prematurely ageing, was hirsute, rugged, satyr-like, gazing vivaciously to left and right; this was George Henry Lewes. His companion was a lar-ge, thickset sybil, dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, somewhat grim when seen in profile, were in-congruously bordered by a hat, always in the height of the Paris fashion, which in those days commonly inclu-ded an immense ostrich feather; this was George Eliot. The contrast between the solemnity of the face and the frivolity of the headgear had something pathetic and provincial about it.