CURRENT LITERATURE.
Melia's Magazine for August, a periodical which seems to be the organ, so to speak, of a grocer, contains, in a series entitled " Our Portrait Gallery," the likeness of Dinah Morris, the heroine of "Adam Bede," and gives at the same time an interesting description of the original. Her real name was Elizabeth Tomlinson. She was born at Newbold, in Leicestershire, in 1779, and went into ser- vice at Derby. After a while, she began to earn an independent living as a lacemender, and gave all her spare time, and whatever remained of her earnings, after a most frugal expenditure, to good works. Her husband was not the Adam Bede of the story, but the Seth, a more congenial character. It was Mr. Lewes's sug- gestion that the facts should be altered to suit what he supposed to be literary fitness. The portrait is certainly disappointing. No one would see anything remarkable in it. But much must be allowed for time and one may suppose, an indifferent artist.
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