"Philosophers', The"

A club at the "Hand and Banner" frequented by Mordecai. "Half a dozen men of various ages, from between twenty and thirty to fifty, all shabbily dressed, most of them with clay pipes in their mouths . . . This was the soberest of clubs . . . Certainly a company select of the select among poor men, being drawn together by a taste not prevalent even among the privileged heirs of learning and its institutions ; and not likely to amuse any gentle man in search of crime or low comedy." The original of the "Philosophers'" was a philosophical club, meeting in Red Lion Square, to which G. H. Lewes once belonged. (See Blind, George Eliot, pp. 105, 268; also article by 6. H. Lewes in Fortnightly Review, vol. iv, p. 384.)

<em>Daniel Deronda</em>

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