Church and not a Pantheon, and the Dean thereof is LITTLE 

 officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to bestow JOURNEYS 

 exceptional Christian honours by this burial in the 

 Abbey. George Eliot is known not only as a great 

 writer, but as a person whose life and opinions were 

 in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard 

 to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma. 

 How am I to tell the Dean that I think he ought to 

 read over the body of a person who did not repent of 

 what the Church considers mortal sin, a service not 

 one solitary proposition of which she would have ac- 

 cepted for truth while she was alive ? How am I to 

 urge him to do that which, if I were in his place, I 

 should most emphatically refuse to do ? 

 You tell me that Mrs. Cross wished for the funeral in 

 the Abbey. While I desire to entertain the greatest 

 respect for her wishes, I am very sorry to hear it. I 

 do not understand the feeling which could create such 

 a desire on any personal grounds, save those of affec- 

 tion, and the natural yearning to be near, even in death, 

 those whom we have loved. And on public grounds 

 the wish is still less intelligible to me. One cannot eat 

 one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free 

 in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, 

 if they are to be so called, which the world offers to 

 those who put up with its fetters. 



Thus, however I look at the proposal, it seems to me 

 to be a profound mistake, and I can have nothing to do 

 with it. 



I shall be deeply grieved if this resolution is ascribed 

 to any other motives than those which I have set forth 

 at greater length than I intended. 



Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



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