Letter from George Eliot, Griff, to Martha Jackson Barclay, 1840 October 20 : autograph manuscript signed.

Confiding her fears that she has lost Martha Jackson's friendship, as she has not received a letter from her, and expressing her sense of foreboding that it may be her fate to go through life without "The bliss of reciprocated affection"; mentioning an inspiring statement she read recently by Aimé Martin ("I was resolved to be neither a Frenchman, a Russian, nor a Turk, but to be a man!"), and hoping that she may likewise "unceasingly aspire to unclothe all around me of its conventional, human, temporary dress ... and thus in perhaps rather a different sense from Wordsworth's 'breath[e] the spirit of the universe'", and expressing her admiration for Martin's "Woman's mission", while taking him to task for not being "an orthodox Christian" and for sapping "the Gospel of all mystery of all spirituality"; noting that she has been reading [Felicia] Hemans, and quoting a passage from her "Forest sanctuary".