prompt:
Chapter: "Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs,
    rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick,
    crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and
    all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are
    most part lean, dry, ill-colored . . . and all through
    immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not
    believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and
    Thomas Aquainas' works; and tell me whether those men took
    pains."--BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.

This was Mr. Casaubon's letter.

MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,--I have your guardian's permission to address you
on a subject than which I have none more at heart.  I am not, I trust,
mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of
date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen
contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with
you.  For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your
eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I
may say, with such activity of the affections as even the
preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not
uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for
observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me
more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus
evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now
referred.  Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to
you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to
the commoner order of minds.  But I have discerned in you an elevation
of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not
conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with
those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer
distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental
qualities above indicated.  It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet
with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive,
adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant
hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me
again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with
foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages
towards the completion of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone
on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a
matrimonial union.

Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings;
and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far
your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment.  To be
accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your
welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts.  In
return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the
faithful consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has
no backward pages whereon, if you choose to turn them, you will find
records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame.  I
await the expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would
be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous
labor than usual.  But in this order of experience I am still young,
and in looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel
that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary
illumination of hope.

        In any case, I shall remain,
                Yours with sincere devotion,
                        EDWARD CASAUBON.

Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her
knees, buried her face, and sobbed.  She could not pray: under the rush
of solemn emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated
uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of
reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her
own.  She remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for
dinner.

How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it
critically as a profession of love?  Her whole soul was possessed by
the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she was a neophyte
about to enter on a higher grade of initiation.  She was going to have
room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness and
pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the
world's habits.

Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties;
now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind
that she could reverence.  This hope was not unmixed with the glow of
proud delight--the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the
man whom her admiration had chosen.  All Dorothea's passion was
transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal life; the
radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that
came within its level.  The impetus with which inclination became
resolution was heightened by those little events of the day which had
roused her discontent with the actual conditions of her life.

After dinner, when Celia was playing an "air, with variations," a small
kind of tinkling which symbolized the aesthetic part of the young
ladies' education, Dorothea went up to her room to answer Mr.
Casaubon's letter.  Why should she defer the answer?  She wrote it over
three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because
her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr.
Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible.  She piqued
herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable
without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use
of this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's eyes.  Three times she
wrote.

MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I am very grateful to you for loving me, and
thinking me worthy to be your wife.  I can look forward to no better
happiness than that which would be one with yours.  If I said more, it
would only be the same thing written out at greater length, for I
cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be through life

                Yours devotedly,
                        DOROTHEA BROOKE.

Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give
him the letter, that he might send it in the morning.  He was
surprised, but his surprise only issued in a few moments' silence,
during which he pushed about various objects on his writing-table, and
finally stood with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose,
looking at the address of Dorothea's letter.

"Have you thought enough about this, my dear?" he said at last.

"There was no need to think long, uncle.  I know of nothing to make me
vacillate.  If I changed my mind, it must be because of something
important and entirely new to me."

"Ah!--then you have accepted him?  Then Chettam has no chance?  Has
Chettam offended you--offended you, you know?  What is it you don't
like in Chettam?"

"There is nothing that I like in him," said Dorothea, rather
impetuously.

Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had
thrown a light missile at him.  Dorothea immediately felt some
self-rebuke, and said--

"I mean in the light of a husband.  He is very kind, I think--really
very good about the cottages.  A well-meaning man."

"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing?  Well, it lies a
little in our family.  I had it myself--that love of knowledge, and
going into everything--a little too much--it took me too far; though
that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female-line; or it runs
underground like the rivers in Greece, you know--it comes out in the
sons.  Clever sons, clever mothers.  I went a good deal into that, at
one time.  However, my dear, I have always said that people should do
as they like in these things, up to a certain point.  I couldn't, as
your guardian, have consented to a bad match.  But Casaubon stands
well: his position is good.  I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though,
and Mrs. Cadwallader will blame me."

That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened.  She
attributed Dorothea's abstracted manner, and the evidence of further
crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir
James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further
offence: having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no
disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects.  It had been her nature
when a child never to quarrel with any one--only to observe with wonder
that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon
she was ready to play at cat's cradle with them whenever they recovered
themselves.  And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find
something wrong in her sister's words, though Celia inwardly protested
that she always said just how things were, and nothing else: she never
did and never could put words together out of her own head.  But the
best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together.  Now,
though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when
Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which
she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low
stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the
musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her
speech like a fine bit of recitative--

"Celia, dear, come and kiss me," holding her arms open as she spoke.

Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly
kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her
lips gravely on each cheek in turn.

"Don't sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night: go to bed soon," said
Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.

"No, dear, I am very, very happy," said Dorothea, fervently.

"So much the better," thought Celia.  "But how strangely Dodo goes from
one extreme to the other."

The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr. Brooke,
said, "Jonas is come back, sir, and has brought this letter."

Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said,
"Casaubon, my dear: he will be here to dinner; he didn't wait to write
more--didn't wait, you know."

It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be
announced to her sister beforehand, but, her eyes following the same
direction as her uncle's, she was struck with the peculiar effect of
the announcement on Dorothea.  It seemed as if something like the
reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features,
ending in one of her rare blushes.  For the first time it entered into
Celia's mind that there might be something more between Mr. Casaubon
and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her delight in
listening.  Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this "ugly" and
learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at
Lausanne, also ugly and learned.  Dorothea had never been tired of
listening to old Monsieur Liret when Celia's feet were as cold as
possible, and when it had really become dreadful to see the skin of his
bald head moving about.  Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to
Mr. Casaubon simply in the same way as to Monsieur Liret?  And it
seemed probable that all learned men had a sort of schoolmaster's view
of young people.

But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted
into her mind.  She was seldom taken by surprise in this way, her
marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally
preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest in.
Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already an accepted lover:
she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that anything in
Dorothea's mind could tend towards such an issue.  Here was something
really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very well not to accept Sir
James Chettam, but the idea of marrying Mr. Casaubon!  Celia felt a
sort of shame mingled with a sense of the ludicrous.  But perhaps Dodo,
if she were really bordering on such an extravagance, might be turned
away from it: experience had often shown that her impressibility might
be calculated on.  The day was damp, and they were not going to walk
out, so they both went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia
observed that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual
diligent interest to some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an
open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with
the damp.  She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the
curate's children, and was not going to enter on any subject too
precipitately.

Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know
of the momentous change in Mr. Casaubon's position since he had last
been in the house: it did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance of
what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was
impossible not to shrink from telling her.  Dorothea accused herself of
some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to have any
small fears or contrivances about her actions, but at this moment she
was seeking the highest aid possible that she might not dread the
corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally minded prose.  Her reverie was
broken, and the difficulty of decision banished, by Celia's small and
rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone, of a remark aside or
a "by the bye."

"Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr. Casaubon?"

"Not that I know of."

"I hope there is some one else.  Then I shall not hear him eat his soup
so."

"What is there remarkable about his soup-eating?"

"Really, Dodo, can't you hear how he scrapes his spoon?  And he always
blinks before he speaks.  I don't know whether Locke blinked, but I'm
sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did."

"Celia," said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, "pray don't make any
more observations of that kind."

"Why not?  They are quite true," returned Celia, who had her reasons
for persevering, though she was beginning to be a little afraid.

"Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe."

"Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful.  I think it is
a pity Mr. Casaubon's mother had not a commoner mind: she might have
taught him better." Celia was inwardly frightened, and ready to run
away, now she had hurled this light javelin.

Dorothea's feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could be no
further preparation.

"It is right to tell you, Celia, that I am engaged to marry Mr.
Casaubon."

Perhaps Celia had never turned so pale before.  The paper man she was
making would have had his leg injured, but for her habitual care of
whatever she held in her hands.  She laid the fragile figure down at
once, and sat perfectly still for a few moments.  When she spoke there
was a tear gathering.

"Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy." Her sisterly tenderness could not
but surmount other feelings at this moment, and her fears were the
fears of affection.

Dorothea was still hurt and agitated.

"It is quite decided, then?" said Celia, in an awed under tone.  "And
uncle knows?"

"I have accepted Mr. Casaubon's offer.  My uncle brought me the letter
that contained it; he knew about it beforehand."

"I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo," said
Celia, with a slight sob.  She never could have thought that she should
feel as she did.  There was something funereal in the whole affair, and
Mr. Casaubon seemed to be the officiating clergyman, about whom it
would be indecent to make remarks.

"Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve.  We should never admire the same
people.  I often offend in something of the same way; I am apt to speak
too strongly of those who don't please me."

In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as
much from Celia's subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms.
Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy with this
marriage.  Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she did about life
and its best objects.

Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy.  In
an hour's tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more
freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the
thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best
share and further all his great ends.  Mr. Casaubon was touched with an
unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike
unrestrained ardor: he was not surprised (what lover would have been?)
that he should be the object of it.

"My dear young lady--Miss Brooke--Dorothea!" he said, pressing her hand
between his hands, "this is a happiness greater than I had ever
imagined to be in reserve for me.  That I should ever meet with a mind
and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage
desirable, was far indeed from my conception.  You have all--nay, more
than all--those qualities which I have ever regarded as the
characteristic excellences of womanhood.  The great charm of your sex
is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein
we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.
Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my
satisfactions have been those of the solitary student.  I have been
little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now
I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom."

No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the
frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the
cawing of an amorous rook.  Would it not be rash to conclude that there
was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the
thin music of a mandolin?

Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed to leave
unsaid: what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity?  The
text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put
into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

"I am very ignorant--you will quite wonder at my ignorance," said
Dorothea.  "I have so many thoughts that may be quite mistaken; and now
I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them.  But,"
she added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon's probable feeling,
"I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen
to me.  You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your
own track.  I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there."

"How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your
companionship?" said Mr. Casaubon, kissing her candid brow, and feeling
that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way suited to his
peculiar wants.  He was being unconsciously wrought upon by the charms
of a nature which was entirely without hidden calculations either for
immediate effects or for remoter ends.  It was this which made Dorothea
so childlike, and, according to some judges, so stupid, with all her
reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the present case of throwing
herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr. Casaubon's feet, and kissing
his unfashionable shoe-ties as if he were a Protestant Pope.  She was
not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough
for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good
enough for Mr. Casaubon.  Before he left the next day it had been
decided that the marriage should take place within six weeks.  Why not?
Mr. Casaubon's house was ready.  It was not a parsonage, but a
considerable mansion, with much land attached to it.  The parsonage was
inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the
morning sermon.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Casaubons letter mentions his decision to remain single, until he finds in her a "rare combination of elements, both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours." He offers her the "faithful consecration" of the rest of his life Dorothea trembles with feeling. The letter is o expression of romantic love and she doesnt expect it. Her attitude is that of a disciple "about to enter a higher grade of initiation. Dorothea replies promptly. She declares that she looks forward to no better happiness than that which would be one with yours." Even her uncle is astounded at her eagerness. He accounts for it by saying she takes after him in her love of scholarship. But he fears that Chettam will be very hurt, and Mrs. Cadwallader, a vicars wife and the representative of public opinion, will blame him. So far neither has told Celia about the proposal, beyond the news that Casaubon is expected at dinner. On hearing Celias digs about Casaubon, Dorothea breaks the news. Celias response mirrors her astonishment and her fears for her sisters happiness. Casaubon arrives to a warm welcome and is himself very happy about Dorotheas "capability of an ardent self sacrificing affection. " For her part, Dorothea declares: "I am very ignorant... I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen to me." Thus, she reveals that she is open, childlike and completely lacking intelligent self-interest.


prompt:
Chapter: My lady's tongue is like the meadow blades,
    That cut you stroking them with idle hand.
    Nice cutting is her function: she divides
    With spiritual edge the millet-seed,
    And makes intangible savings.

As Mr. Casaubon's carriage was passing out of the gateway, it arrested
the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated
behind.  It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for
Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was
quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time.
In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain
that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the
low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance of the small phaeton.

"Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?" said the
high-colored, dark-eyed lady, with the clearest chiselled utterance.

"Pretty well for laying, madam, but they've ta'en to eating their eggs:
I've no peace o' mind with 'em at all."

"Oh, the cannibals!  Better sell them cheap at once.  What will you
sell them a couple?  One can't eat fowls of a bad character at a high
price."

"Well, madam, half-a-crown: I couldn't let 'em go, not under."

"Half-a-crown, these times!  Come now--for the Rector's chicken-broth
on a Sunday.  He has consumed all ours that I can spare.  You are half
paid with the sermon, Mrs. Fitchett, remember that.  Take a pair of
tumbler-pigeons for them--little beauties.  You must come and see them.
You have no tumblers among your pigeons."

"Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after work.  He's
very hot on new sorts; to oblige you."

"Oblige me!  It will be the best bargain he ever made.  A pair of
church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own
eggs!  Don't you and Fitchett boast too much, that is all!"

The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs.
Fitchett laughing and shaking her head slowly, with an interjectional
"Sure_ly_, sure_ly_!"--from which it might be inferred that she would
have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady had
been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint.  Indeed, both the
farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have
felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs.
Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended,
as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades--who
pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most
companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you know
who she was.  Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and
religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe.  A much
more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not
have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and
would have been less socially uniting.

Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader's merits from a different point of
view, winced a little when her name was announced in the library, where
he was sitting alone.

"I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here," she said, seating herself
comfortably, throwing back her wraps, and showing a thin but well-built
figure.  "I suspect you and he are brewing some bad polities, else you
would not be seeing so much of the lively man.  I shall inform against
you: remember you are both suspicious characters since you took Peel's
side about the Catholic Bill.  I shall tell everybody that you are
going to put up for Middlemarch on the Whig side when old Pinkerton
resigns, and that Casaubon is going to help you in an underhand manner:
going to bribe the voters with pamphlets, and throw open the
public-houses to distribute them.  Come, confess!"

"Nothing of the sort," said Mr. Brooke, smiling and rubbing his
eye-glasses, but really blushing a little at the impeachment.
"Casaubon and I don't talk politics much.  He doesn't care much about
the philanthropic side of things; punishments, and that kind of thing.
He only cares about Church questions.  That is not my line of action,
you know."

"Ra-a-ther too much, my friend.  I have heard of your doings.  Who was
it that sold his bit of land to the Papists at Middlemarch?  I believe
you bought it on purpose.  You are a perfect Guy Faux.  See if you are
not burnt in effigy this 5th of November coming.  Humphrey would not
come to quarrel with you about it, so I am come."

"Very good.  I was prepared to be persecuted for not persecuting--not
persecuting, you know."

"There you go!  That is a piece of clap-trap you have got ready for the
hustings.  Now, _do not_ let them lure you to the hustings, my dear Mr.
Brooke.  A man always makes a fool of himself, speechifying: there's no
excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on
your humming and hawing.  You will lose yourself, I forewarn you.  You
will make a Saturday pie of all parties' opinions, and be pelted by
everybody."

"That is what I expect, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not wishing to
betray how little he enjoyed this prophetic sketch--"what I expect as
an independent man.  As to the Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers
is not likely to be hooked on by any party.  He may go with them up to
a certain point--up to a certain point, you know.  But that is what you
ladies never understand."

"Where your certain point is?  No. I should like to be told how a man
can have any certain point when he belongs to no party--leading a
roving life, and never letting his friends know his address.  'Nobody
knows where Brooke will be--there's no counting on Brooke'--that is
what people say of you, to be quite frank.  Now, do turn respectable.
How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you,
and you with a bad conscience and an empty pocket?"

"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr. Brooke,
with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly
conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader's had opened the
defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him.  "Your
sex are not thinkers, you know--varium et mutabile semper--that kind of
thing.  You don't know Virgil.  I knew"--Mr. Brooke reflected in time
that he had not had the personal acquaintance of the Augustan poet--"I
was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know.  That was what _he_ said.
You ladies are always against an independent attitude--a man's caring
for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing.  And there is no part of
the county where opinion is narrower than it is here--I don't mean to
throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent
line; and if I don't take it, who will?"

"Who?  Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position.  People
of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk
it about.  And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as your
daughter, to one of our best men.  Sir James would be cruelly annoyed:
it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself a
Whig sign-board."

Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's engagement had no
sooner been decided, than he had thought of Mrs. Cadwallader's
prospective taunts.  It might have been easy for ignorant observers to
say, "Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;" but where is a country gentleman
to go who quarrels with his oldest neighbors?  Who could taste the fine
flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine
without a seal?  Certainly a man can only be cosmopolitan up to a
certain point.

"I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to
say there is no prospect of his marrying my niece," said Mr. Brooke,
much relieved to see through the window that Celia was coming in.

"Why not?" said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise.  "It
is hardly a fortnight since you and I were talking about it."

"My niece has chosen another suitor--has chosen him, you know.  I have
had nothing to do with it.  I should have preferred Chettam; and I
should have said Chettam was the man any girl would have chosen.  But
there is no accounting for these things.  Your sex is capricious, you
know."

"Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let her marry?"
Mrs. Cadwallader's mind was rapidly surveying the possibilities of
choice for Dorothea.

But here Celia entered, blooming from a walk in the garden, and the
greeting with her delivered Mr. Brooke from the necessity of answering
immediately.  He got up hastily, and saying, "By the way, I must speak
to Wright about the horses," shuffled quickly out of the room.

"My dear child, what is this?--this about your sister's engagement?"
said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"She is engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon," said Celia, resorting, as
usual, to the simplest statement of fact, and enjoying this opportunity
of speaking to the Rector's wife alone.

"This is frightful.  How long has it been going on?"

"I only knew of it yesterday.  They are to be married in six weeks."

"Well, my dear, I wish you joy of your brother-in-law."

"I am so sorry for Dorothea."

"Sorry!  It is her doing, I suppose."

"Yes; she says Mr. Casaubon has a great soul."

"With all my heart."

"Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to marry a man with
a great soul."

"Well, my dear, take warning.  You know the look of one now; when the
next comes and wants to marry you, don't you accept him."

"I'm sure I never should."

"No; one such in a family is enough.  So your sister never cared about
Sir James Chettam?  What would you have said to _him_ for a
brother-in-law?"

"I should have liked that very much.  I am sure he would have been a
good husband.  Only," Celia added, with a slight blush (she sometimes
seemed to blush as she breathed), "I don't think he would have suited
Dorothea."

"Not high-flown enough?"

"Dodo is very strict.  She thinks so much about everything, and is so
particular about what one says.  Sir James never seemed to please her."

"She must have encouraged him, I am sure.  That is not very creditable."

"Please don't be angry with Dodo; she does not see things.  She thought
so much about the cottages, and she was rude to Sir James sometimes;
but he is so kind, he never noticed it."

"Well," said Mrs. Cadwallader, putting on her shawl, and rising, as if
in haste, "I must go straight to Sir James and break this to him.  He
will have brought his mother back by this time, and I must call.  Your
uncle will never tell him.  We are all disappointed, my dear.  Young
people should think of their families in marrying.  I set a bad
example--married a poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object
among the De Bracys--obliged to get my coals by stratagem, and pray to
heaven for my salad oil.  However, Casaubon has money enough; I must do
him that justice.  As to his blood, I suppose the family quarterings
are three cuttle-fish sable, and a commentator rampant.  By the bye,
before I go, my dear, I must speak to your Mrs. Carter about pastry.  I
want to send my young cook to learn of her.  Poor people with four
children, like us, you know, can't afford to keep a good cook.  I have
no doubt Mrs. Carter will oblige me.  Sir James's cook is a perfect
dragon."

In less than an hour, Mrs. Cadwallader had circumvented Mrs. Carter and
driven to Freshitt Hall, which was not far from her own parsonage, her
husband being resident in Freshitt and keeping a curate in Tipton.

Sir James Chettam had returned from the short journey which had kept
him absent for a couple of days, and had changed his dress, intending
to ride over to Tipton Grange.  His horse was standing at the door when
Mrs. Cadwallader drove up, and he immediately appeared there himself,
whip in hand.  Lady Chettam had not yet returned, but Mrs.
Cadwallader's errand could not be despatched in the presence of grooms,
so she asked to be taken into the conservatory close by, to look at the
new plants; and on coming to a contemplative stand, she said--

"I have a great shock for you; I hope you are not so far gone in love
as you pretended to be."

It was of no use protesting, against Mrs. Cadwallader's way of putting
things.  But Sir James's countenance changed a little.  He felt a vague
alarm.

"I do believe Brooke is going to expose himself after all.  I accused
him of meaning to stand for Middlemarch on the Liberal side, and he
looked silly and never denied it--talked about the independent line,
and the usual nonsense."

"Is that all?" said Sir James, much relieved.

"Why," rejoined Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharper note, "you don't mean
to say that you would like him to turn public man in that way--making a
sort of political Cheap Jack of himself?"

"He might be dissuaded, I should think.  He would not like the expense."

"That is what I told him.  He is vulnerable to reason there--always a
few grains of common-sense in an ounce of miserliness.  Miserliness is
a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to
dip on.  And there must be a little crack in the Brooke family, else we
should not see what we are to see."

"What?  Brooke standing for Middlemarch?"

"Worse than that.  I really feel a little responsible.  I always told
you Miss Brooke would be such a fine match.  I knew there was a great
deal of nonsense in her--a flighty sort of Methodistical stuff.  But
these things wear out of girls.  However, I am taken by surprise for
once."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James.  His fear lest
Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some
preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the
knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things.  "What
has happened to Miss Brooke?  Pray speak out."

"Very well.  She is engaged to be married." Mrs. Cadwallader paused a
few moments, observing the deeply hurt expression in her friend's face,
which he was trying to conceal by a nervous smile, while he whipped his
boot; but she soon added, "Engaged to Casaubon."

Sir James let his whip fall and stooped to pick it up.  Perhaps his
face had never before gathered so much concentrated disgust as when he
turned to Mrs. Cadwallader and repeated, "Casaubon?"

"Even so.  You know my errand now."

"Good God!  It is horrible!  He is no better than a mummy!" (The point
of view has to be allowed for, as that of a blooming and disappointed
rival.)

"She says, he is a great soul.--A great bladder for dried peas to
rattle in!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?" said Sir James.
"He has one foot in the grave."

"He means to draw it out again, I suppose."

"Brooke ought not to allow it: he should insist on its being put off
till she is of age.  She would think better of it then.  What is a
guardian for?"

"As if you could ever squeeze a resolution out of Brooke!"

"Cadwallader might talk to him."

"Not he!  Humphrey finds everybody charming. I never can get him to
abuse Casaubon.  He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell
him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a
husband who attends so little to the decencies?  I hide it as well as I
can by abusing everybody myself.  Come, come, cheer up!  you are well
rid of Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been requiring you to see the
stars by daylight.  Between ourselves, little Celia is worth two of
her, and likely after all to be the better match.  For this marriage to
Casaubon is as good as going to a nunnery."

"Oh, on my own account--it is for Miss Brooke's sake I think her
friends should try to use their influence."

"Well, Humphrey doesn't know yet.  But when I tell him, you may depend
on it he will say, 'Why not?  Casaubon is a good fellow--and
young--young enough.' These charitable people never know vinegar from
wine till they have swallowed it and got the colic.  However, if I were
a man I should prefer Celia, especially when Dorothea was gone.  The
truth is, you have been courting one and have won the other.  I can see
that she admires you almost as much as a man expects to be admired.  If
it were any one but me who said so, you might think it exaggeration.
Good-by!"

Sir James handed Mrs. Cadwallader to the phaeton, and then jumped on
his horse.  He was not going to renounce his ride because of his
friend's unpleasant news--only to ride the faster in some other
direction than that of Tipton Grange.

Now, why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy about
Miss Brooke's marriage; and why, when one match that she liked to think
she had a hand in was frustrated, should she have straightway contrived
the preliminaries of another?  Was there any ingenious plot, any
hide-and-seek course of action, which might be detected by a careful
telescopic watch?  Not at all: a telescope might have swept the
parishes of Tipton and Freshitt, the whole area visited by Mrs.
Cadwallader in her phaeton, without witnessing any interview that could
excite suspicion, or any scene from which she did not return with the
same unperturbed keenness of eye and the same high natural color.  In
fact, if that convenient vehicle had existed in the days of the Seven
Sages, one of them would doubtless have remarked, that you can know
little of women by following them about in their pony-phaetons. Even
with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making
interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a
weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity
into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so
many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain
tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the
swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom.  In this way,
metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's
match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be
called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she
needed.  Her life was rurally simple, quite free from secrets either
foul, dangerous, or otherwise important, and not consciously affected
by the great affairs of the world.  All the more did the affairs of the
great world interest her, when communicated in the letters of high-born
relations: the way in which fascinating younger sons had gone to the
dogs by marrying their mistresses; the fine old-blooded idiocy of young
Lord Tapir, and the furious gouty humors of old Lord Megatherium; the
exact crossing of genealogies which had brought a coronet into a new
branch and widened the relations of scandal,--these were topics of
which she retained details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced
them in an excellent pickle of epigrams, which she herself enjoyed the
more because she believed as unquestionably in birth and no-birth as
she did in game and vermin.  She would never have disowned any one on
the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin
would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I
fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified her.  But her
feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they
had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs.
Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in
kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's design in making
the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears.  A town
where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy,
which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the
universe.  Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader
inquire into the comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be
quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have
the honor to coexist with hers.

With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came
near into the form that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that
the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her?
especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr.
Brooke with the friendliest frankness, and let him know in confidence
that she thought him a poor creature.  From the first arrival of the
young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea's marriage with Sir
James, and if it had taken place would have been quite sure that it was
her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it,
caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with.  She
was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for anything to happen
in spite of her was an offensive irregularity.  As to freaks like this
of Miss Brooke's, Mrs. Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now
saw that her opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her
husband's weak charitableness: those Methodistical whims, that air of
being more religious than the rector and curate together, came from a
deeper and more constitutional disease than she had been willing to
believe.

"However," said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and afterwards to
her husband, "I throw her over: there was a chance, if she had married
Sir James, of her becoming a sane, sensible woman.  He would never have
contradicted her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no
motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.  But now I wish her joy of her
hair shirt."

It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir
James, and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss
Brooke, there could not have been a more skilful move towards the
success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an
impression on Celia's heart.  For he was not one of those gentlemen who
languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the
topmost bough--the charms which

        "Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff,
         Not to be come at by the willing hand."

He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him agreeably that
he was not an object of preference to the woman whom he had preferred.
Already the knowledge that Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had bruised
his attachment and relaxed its hold.  Although Sir James was a
sportsman, he had some other feelings towards women than towards grouse
and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey,
valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase.  Neither was he so
well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an
ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to
the historical continuity of the marriage-tie. On the contrary, having
the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and
disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful
nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun
little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.

Thus it happened, that after Sir James had ridden rather fast for half
an hour in a direction away from Tipton Grange, he slackened his pace,
and at last turned into a road which would lead him back by a shorter
cut.  Various feelings wrought in him the determination after all to go
to the Grange to-day as if nothing new had happened.  He could not help
rejoicing that he had never made the offer and been rejected; mere
friendly politeness required that he should call to see Dorothea about
the cottages, and now happily Mrs. Cadwallader had prepared him to
offer his congratulations, if necessary, without showing too much
awkwardness.  He really did not like it: giving up Dorothea was very
painful to him; but there was something in the resolve to make this
visit forthwith and conquer all show of feeling, which was a sort of
file-biting and counter-irritant. And without his distinctly
recognizing the impulse, there certainly was present in him the sense
that Celia would be there, and that he should pay her more attention
than he had done before.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between
breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale
about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride
helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide
our own hurts--not to hurt others.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The slow but inevitable progress of Dorotheas approaching marriage is broken here with a lively diversion. The penny pinching, outspoken Mrs. Cadwallader, without whom "the countryside would be somewhat duller," makes her entry. Married to the rector of Tipton parish, she is known to be "descended from unknown earls," a fact she never lets anyone forget. She visits Brookes house, suspecting a "story" behind Casaubons frequent visits. Mr. Brooke fears her acid tongue and stalls telling her of the engagement, but Celia informs her of it. Full of disapproval, the village busybody dashes off to Freshitt, Chettams estate, to inform him of the dashing of his hopes. While he is licking his wounds, Mrs. Cadwallader breezily advises him to forget Dorothea, and consider Celia as a far better match. She hints that Celia is already interested in him. Sir James is left feeling unhappy but soothed by two facts: that he hasnt actually proposed and been rejected; and that Celia will be at the Grange and he could pay her more attention.


prompt:
Chapter: "Piacer e popone
     Vuol la sua stagione."
            --Italian Proverb.

Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at
the Grange in these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned
to the progress of his great work--the Key to all
Mythologies--naturally made him look forward the more eagerly to the
happy termination of courtship.  But he had deliberately incurred the
hindrance, having made up his mind that it was now time for him to
adorn his life with the graces of female companionship, to irradiate
the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals of studious
labor with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his
culminating age, the solace of female tendance for his declining years.
Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling, and
perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was.
As in droughty regions baptism by immersion could only be performed
symbolically, Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost
approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he
concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine
passion.  Nevertheless, he observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke
showed an ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil his most
agreeable previsions of marriage.  It had once or twice crossed his
mind that possibly there was some deficiency in Dorothea to account for
the moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to discern the
deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him
better; so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the
exaggerations of human tradition.

"Could I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?" said Dorothea
to him, one morning, early in the time of courtship; "could I not learn
to read Latin and Greek aloud to you, as Milton's daughters did to
their father, without understanding what they read?"

"I fear that would be wearisome to you," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling;
"and, indeed, if I remember rightly, the young women you have mentioned
regarded that exercise in unknown tongues as a ground for rebellion
against the poet."

"Yes; but in the first place they were very naughty girls, else they
would have been proud to minister to such a father; and in the second
place they might have studied privately and taught themselves to
understand what they read, and then it would have been interesting.  I
hope you don't expect me to be naughty and stupid?"

"I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every
possible relation of life.  Certainly it might be a great advantage if
you were able to copy the Greek character, and to that end it were well
to begin with a little reading."

Dorothea seized this as a precious permission.  She would not have
asked Mr. Casaubon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all
things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out
of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and
Greek.  Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a
standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.  As it
was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her
own ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were
not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to
conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory?
Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary--at least the alphabet and a few
roots--in order to arrive at the core of things, and judge soundly on
the social duties of the Christian.  And she had not reached that point
of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a
wise husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself.  Miss Brooke
was certainly very naive with all her alleged cleverness.  Celia, whose
mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of other
people's pretensions much more readily.  To have in general but little
feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any
particular occasion.

However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour
together, like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover,
to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have a
touching fitness.  Few scholars would have disliked teaching the
alphabet under such circumstances.  But Dorothea herself was a little
shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got
to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a
painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable
of explanation to a woman's reason.

Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his
usual strength upon it one day that he came into the library while the
reading was going forward.

"Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics,
that kind of thing, are too taxing for a woman--too taxing, you know."

"Dorothea is learning to read the characters simply," said Mr.
Casaubon, evading the question.  "She had the very considerate thought
of saving my eyes."

"Ah, well, without understanding, you know--that may not be so bad.
But there is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and
go--music, the fine arts, that kind of thing--they should study those
up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know.  A
woman should be able to sit down and play you or sing you a good old
English tune.  That is what I like; though I have heard most
things--been at the opera in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that
sort.  But I'm a conservative in music--it's not like ideas, you know.
I stick to the good old tunes."

"Mr. Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not,"
said Dorothea, whose slight regard for domestic music and feminine fine
art must be forgiven her, considering the small tinkling and smearing
in which they chiefly consisted at that dark period.  She smiled and
looked up at her betrothed with grateful eyes.  If he had always been
asking her to play the "Last Rose of Summer," she would have required
much resignation.  "He says there is only an old harpsichord at Lowick,
and it is covered with books."

"Ah, there you are behind Celia, my dear.  Celia, now, plays very
prettily, and is always ready to play.  However, since Casaubon does
not like it, you are all right.  But it's a pity you should not have
little recreations of that sort, Casaubon: the bow always strung--that
kind of thing, you know--will not do."

"I never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears
teased with measured noises," said Mr. Casaubon.  "A tune much iterated
has the ridiculous effect of making the words in my mind perform a sort
of minuet to keep time--an effect hardly tolerable, I imagine, after
boyhood.  As to the grander forms of music, worthy to accompany solemn
celebrations, and even to serve as an educating influence according to
the ancient conception, I say nothing, for with these we are not
immediately concerned."

"No; but music of that sort I should enjoy," said Dorothea.  "When we
were coming home from Lausanne my uncle took us to hear the great organ
at Freiberg, and it made me sob."

"That kind of thing is not healthy, my dear," said Mr. Brooke.
"Casaubon, she will be in your hands now: you must teach my niece to
take things more quietly, eh, Dorothea?"

He ended with a smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really
thinking that it was perhaps better for her to be early married to so
sober a fellow as Casaubon, since she would not hear of Chettam.

"It is wonderful, though," he said to himself as he shuffled out of the
room--"it is wonderful that she should have liked him.  However, the
match is good.  I should have been travelling out of my brief to have
hindered it, let Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will.  He is pretty
certain to be a bishop, is Casaubon.  That was a very seasonable
pamphlet of his on the Catholic Question:--a deanery at least.  They
owe him a deanery."

And here I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by
remarking that Mr. Brooke on this occasion little thought of the
Radical speech which, at a later period, he was led to make on the
incomes of the bishops.  What elegant historian would neglect a
striking opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did not foresee
the history of the world, or even their own actions?--For example, that
Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little thought of being a
Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his
laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen
measuring their idle days with watches.  Here is a mine of truth,
which, however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our
coal.

But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by
precedent--namely, that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not
have made any great difference.  To think with pleasure of his niece's
husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thing--to make a
Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot
look at a subject from various points of view.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Casaubon, having spent most of his life alone, now looks forward to his marriage and "the graces of female companionship and support. But while Dorothea is whole hearted in her affection, he cannot find the same intensity in himself. He concludes, "the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion." Dorothea now eagerly asks to be taught Greek, so that she may help him by reading aloud from the scriptures, as "Miltons daughters did to their father." Casaubon is skeptical, as he knows of the revolt by the blind poets daughters. Yet, overcome by her zest, he agrees to teach her Greek for an hour each day. Dorothea seizes the opportunity for two reasons; she longs to help him; she seeks "these provinces of masculine knowledge seemed... a standing ground from which all truth could be seen more truly." Brooke disapproves, convinced that "deep studies...are too taxing for a woman." He would prefer his niece to "play some good old English tune" on the piano. Dorothea, not interested in the "small tinkling" which such feminine talents were confined to is happy when Casaubon supports her. Brooke consoles himself with the thought that Dorotheas extreme enthusiasm will be contained by Casaubons sobriety.


prompt:
Chapter: "Oh, rescue her!  I am her brother now,
     And you her father.  Every gentle maid
     Should have a guardian in each gentleman."

It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like
going to the Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of
seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was
engaged to another man.  Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass
through him when he first approached her, and he remained conscious
throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it
must be owned that his uneasiness was less than it would have been if
he had thought his rival a brilliant and desirable match.  He had no
sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that
Dorothea was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost
some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion.

Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely
resigned her, since with the perversity of a Desdemona she had not
affected a proposed match that was clearly suitable and according to
nature; he could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her
engagement to Mr. Casaubon.  On the day when he first saw them together
in the light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had not
taken the affair seriously enough.  Brooke was really culpable; he
ought to have hindered it.  Who could speak to him?  Something might be
done perhaps even now, at least to defer the marriage.  On his way home
he turned into the Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader.  Happily, the
Rector was at home, and his visitor was shown into the study, where all
the fishing tackle hung.  But he himself was in a little room
adjoining, at work with his turning apparatus, and he called to the
baronet to join him there.  The two were better friends than any other
landholder and clergyman in the county--a significant fact which was in
agreement with the amiable expression of their faces.

Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very
plain and rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease
and good-humor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the
sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed
of itself.  "Well, how are you?" he said, showing a hand not quite fit
to be grasped.  "Sorry I missed you before.  Is there anything
particular?  You look vexed."

Sir James's brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the
eyebrow, which he seemed purposely to exaggerate as he answered.

"It is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think somebody should
speak to him."

"What? meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the
arrangement of the reels which he had just been turning.  "I hardly
think he means it.  But where's the harm, if he likes it?  Any one who
objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the
strongest fellow.  They won't overturn the Constitution with our friend
Brooke's head for a battering ram."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after putting down his
hat and throwing himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and
examine the sole of his boot with much bitterness.  "I mean this
marriage.  I mean his letting that blooming young girl marry Casaubon."

"What is the matter with Casaubon?  I see no harm in him--if the girl
likes him."

"She is too young to know what she likes.  Her guardian ought to
interfere.  He ought not to allow the thing to be done in this headlong
manner.  I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader--a man with daughters,
can look at the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as
yours!  Do think seriously about it."

"I am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the Rector, with a
provoking little inward laugh.  "You are as bad as Elinor.  She has
been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that
her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she
married me."

"But look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly.  "He must be
fifty, and I don't believe he could ever have been much more than the
shadow of a man.  Look at his legs!"

"Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your
own way in the world.  You don't under stand women.  They don't admire
you half so much as you admire yourselves.  Elinor used to tell her
sisters that she married me for my ugliness--it was so various and
amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence."

"You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you.  But this is no
question of beauty.  I don't _like_ Casaubon." This was Sir James's
strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man's character.

"Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his
reels, and putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of
attention.

Sir James paused.  He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons:
it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being
told, since he only felt what was reasonable.  At last he said--

"Now, Cadwallader, has he got any heart?"

"Well, yes.  I don't mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel,
_that_ you may be sure of.  He is very good to his poor relations:
pensions several of the women, and is educating a young fellow at a
good deal of expense.  Casaubon acts up to his sense of justice.  His
mother's sister made a bad match--a Pole, I think--lost herself--at any
rate was disowned by her family.  If it had not been for that, Casaubon
would not have had so much money by half.  I believe he went himself to
find out his cousins, and see what he could do for them.  Every man
would not ring so well as that, if you tried his metal.  _You_ would,
Chettam; but not every man."

"I don't know," said Sir James, coloring.  "I am not so sure of
myself." He paused a moment, and then added, "That was a right thing
for Casaubon to do.  But a man may wish to do what is right, and yet be
a sort of parchment code.  A woman may not be happy with him.  And I
think when a girl is so young as Miss Brooke is, her friends ought to
interfere a little to hinder her from doing anything foolish.  You
laugh, because you fancy I have some feeling on my own account.  But
upon my honor, it is not that.  I should feel just the same if I were
Miss Brooke's brother or uncle."

"Well, but what should you do?"

"I should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of
age.  And depend upon it, in that case, it would never come off.  I
wish you saw it as I do--I wish you would talk to Brooke about it."

Sir James rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he saw Mrs.
Cadwallader entering from the study.  She held by the hand her youngest
girl, about five years old, who immediately ran to papa, and was made
comfortable on his knee.

"I hear what you are talking about," said the wife.  "But you will make
no impression on Humphrey.  As long as the fish rise to his bait,
everybody is what he ought to be.  Bless you, Casaubon has got a
trout-stream, and does not care about fishing in it himself: could
there be a better fellow?"

"Well, there is something in that," said the Rector, with his quiet,
inward laugh.  "It is a very good quality in a man to have a
trout-stream."

"But seriously," said Sir James, whose vexation had not yet spent
itself, "don't you think the Rector might do some good by speaking?"

"Oh, I told you beforehand what he would say," answered Mrs.
Cadwallader, lifting up her eyebrows.  "I have done what I could: I
wash my hands of the marriage."

"In the first place," said the Rector, looking rather grave, "it would
be nonsensical to expect that I could convince Brooke, and make him act
accordingly.  Brooke is a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into
any mould, but he won't keep shape."

"He might keep shape long enough to defer the marriage," said Sir James.

"But, my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to Casaubon's
disadvantage, unless I were much surer than I am that I should be
acting for the advantage of Miss Brooke?  I know no harm of Casaubon.
I don't care about his Xisuthrus and Fee-fo-fum and the rest; but then
he doesn't care about my fishing-tackle. As to the line he took on the
Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always been civil to
me, and I don't see why I should spoil his sport.  For anything I can
tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than she would be with any
other man."

"Humphrey!  I have no patience with you.  You know you would rather
dine under the hedge than with Casaubon alone.  You have nothing to say
to each other."

"What has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him?  She does not do
it for my amusement."

"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.

"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all
semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying," said Sir
James, with a disgust which he held warranted by the sound feeling of
an English layman.

"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains.  They
say, when he was a little boy, he made an abstract of 'Hop o' my
Thumb,' and he has been making abstracts ever since.  Ugh!  And that is
the man Humphrey goes on saying that a woman may be happy with."

"Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector.  "I don't
profess to understand every young lady's taste."

"But if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James.

"That would be a different affair.  She is _not_ my daughter, and I
don't feel called upon to interfere.  Casaubon is as good as most of
us.  He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable to the cloth.  Some
Radical fellow speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the
learned straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick-and-mortar
incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent.  And upon my word, I don't
see that one is worse or better than the other." The Rector ended with
his silent laugh.  He always saw the joke of any satire against
himself.  His conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it
did only what it could do without any trouble.

Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss Brooke's marriage
through Mr. Cadwallader; and Sir James felt with some sadness that she
was to have perfect liberty of misjudgment.  It was a sign of his good
disposition that he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying
out Dorothea's design of the cottages.  Doubtless this persistence was
the best course for his own dignity: but pride only helps us to be
generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
She was now enough aware of Sir James's position with regard to her, to
appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord's duty, to
which he had at first been urged by a lover's complaisance, and her
pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in her
present happiness.  Perhaps she gave to Sir James Chettam's cottages
all the interest she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the
symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self
devotion which that learned gentleman had set playing in her soul.
Hence it happened that in the good baronet's succeeding visits, while
he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found himself
talking with more and more pleasure to Dorothea.  She was perfectly
unconstrained and without irritation towards him now, and he was
gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and
companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or
confess.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Sir James Chettam reconciles himself quite easily to losing Dorothea. One reason for this is the obvious unattractiveness of his successful rival! His disapproval changes to compassion for one so misguided as Dorothea. This compassion moves him to approach the local rector, Cadwallader, to intercede with Brooke. Cadwallader, in contrast to his wife, is a placid, good-humored man, whose wife claims she was attracted by his ugliness. Cadwallader refuses to interfere merely on the ground of age. He considers Casaubon an honorable man, generous to his poorer relatives, and polite to everyone. Nor does he feel that they can be assured Dorothea will be unhappy with him. Cadwalladers reply is good humored but firm. Sir James sadly gives up his lost cause. He begins to pay more attention to Celia, but does not slacken in his rebuilding of the cottages planned by Dorothea. As a result, his relationship with Dorothea becomes one of "frank kindness and companionship," uncomplicated by any sexual tension.


prompt:
Chapter: 1st Gent. An ancient land in ancient oracles
                 Is called "law-thirsty": all the struggle there
                 Was after order and a perfect rule.
                 Pray, where lie such lands now? . . .
    2d Gent.  Why, where they lay of old--in human souls.

Mr. Casaubon's behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to
Mr. Brooke, and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along,
shortening the weeks of courtship.  The betrothed bride must see her
future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made
there.  A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an
appetite for submission afterwards.  And certainly, the mistakes that
we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly
raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

On a gray but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company
with her uncle and Celia.  Mr. Casaubon's home was the manor-house.
Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church,
with the old parsonage opposite.  In the beginning of his career, Mr.
Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put
him in possession of the manor also.  It had a small park, with a fine
old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest
front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from
the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope
of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures,
which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun.  This was
the happy side of the house, for the south and east looked rather
melancholy even under the brightest morning.  The grounds here were
more confined, the flower-beds showed no very careful tendance, and
large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten
yards from the windows.  The building, of greenish stone, was in the
old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking:
the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open windows,
and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home.  In
this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves
falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without
sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr.
Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown
into relief by that background.

"Oh dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would have
been pleasanter than this." She thought of the white freestone, the
pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling
above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rose-bush,
with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately
odorous petals--Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things
which had common-sense in them, and not about learning!  Celia had
those light young feminine tastes which grave and weatherworn gentlemen
sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias had been
different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.

Dorothea, on the contrary, found the house and grounds all that she
could wish: the dark book-shelves in the long library, the carpets and
curtains with colors subdued by time, the curious old maps and
bird's-eye views on the walls of the corridor, with here and there an
old vase below, had no oppression for her, and seemed more cheerful
than the easts and pictures at the Grange, which her uncle had long ago
brought home from his travels--they being probably among the ideas he
had taken in at one time.  To poor Dorothea these severe classical
nudities and smirking Renaissance-Correggiosities were painfully
inexplicable, staring into the midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she
had never been taught how she could bring them into any sort of
relevance with her life.  But the owners of Lowick apparently had not
been travellers, and Mr. Casaubon's studies of the past were not
carried on by means of such aids.

Dorothea walked about the house with delightful emotion.  Everything
seemed hallowed to her: this was to be the home of her wifehood, and
she looked up with eyes full of confidence to Mr. Casaubon when he drew
her attention specially to some actual arrangement and asked her if she
would like an alteration.  All appeals to her taste she met gratefully,
but saw nothing to alter.  His efforts at exact courtesy and formal
tenderness had no defect for her.  She filled up all blanks with
unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works
of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness
to the higher harmonies.  And there are many blanks left in the weeks
of courtship which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.

"Now, my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favor me by pointing out which
room you would like to have as your boudoir," said Mr. Casaubon,
showing that his views of the womanly nature were sufficiently large to
include that requirement.

"It is very kind of you to think of that," said Dorothea, "but I assure
you I would rather have all those matters decided for me.  I shall be
much happier to take everything as it is--just as you have been used to
have it, or as you will yourself choose it to be.  I have no motive for
wishing anything else."

"Oh, Dodo," said Celia, "will you not have the bow-windowed room
up-stairs?"

Mr. Casaubon led the way thither.  The bow-window looked down the
avenue of limes; the furniture was all of a faded blue, and there were
miniatures of ladies and gentlemen with powdered hair hanging in a
group.  A piece of tapestry over a door also showed a blue-green world
with a pale stag in it.  The chairs and tables were thin-legged and
easy to upset.  It was a room where one might fancy the ghost of a
tight-laced lady revisiting the scene of her embroidery.  A light
bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf,
completing the furniture.

"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, "this would be a pretty room with some new
hangings, sofas, and that sort of thing.  A little bare now."

"No, uncle," said Dorothea, eagerly.  "Pray do not speak of altering
anything.  There are so many other things in the world that want
altering--I like to take these things as they are.  And you like them
as they are, don't you?" she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon.  "Perhaps
this was your mother's room when she was young."

"It was," he said, with his slow bend of the head.

"This is your mother," said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the
group of miniatures.  "It is like the tiny one you brought me; only, I
should think, a better portrait.  And this one opposite, who is this?"

"Her elder sister.  They were, like you and your sister, the only two
children of their parents, who hang above them, you see."

"The sister is pretty," said Celia, implying that she thought less
favorably of Mr. Casaubon's mother.  It was a new opening to Celia's
imagination, that he came of a family who had all been young in their
time--the ladies wearing necklaces.

"It is a peculiar face," said Dorothea, looking closely.  "Those deep
gray eyes rather near together--and the delicate irregular nose with a
sort of ripple in it--and all the powdered curls hanging backward.
Altogether it seems to me peculiar rather than pretty.  There is not
even a family likeness between her and your mother."

"No. And they were not alike in their lot."

"You did not mention her to me," said Dorothea.

"My aunt made an unfortunate marriage.  I never saw her."

Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just
then to ask for any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and
she turned to the window to admire the view.  The sun had lately
pierced the gray, and the avenue of limes cast shadows.

"Shall we not walk in the garden now?" said Dorothea.

"And you would like to see the church, you know," said Mr. Brooke.  "It
is a droll little church.  And the village.  It all lies in a
nut-shell. By the way, it will suit you, Dorothea; for the cottages are
like a row of alms-houses--little gardens, gilly-flowers, that sort of
thing."

"Yes, please," said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I should like
to see all that." She had got nothing from him more graphic about the
Lowick cottages than that they were "not bad."

They were soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy
borders and clumps of trees, this being the nearest way to the church,
Mr. Casaubon said.  At the little gate leading into the churchyard
there was a pause while Mr. Casaubon went to the parsonage close by to
fetch a key.  Celia, who had been hanging a little in the rear, came up
presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in
her easy staccato, which always seemed to contradict the suspicion of
any malicious intent--

"Do you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the
walks."

"Is that astonishing, Celia?"

"There may be a young gardener, you know--why not?" said Mr. Brooke.
"I told Casaubon he should change his gardener."

"No, not a gardener," said Celia; "a gentleman with a sketch-book. He
had light-brown curls.  I only saw his back.  But he was quite young."

"The curate's son, perhaps," said Mr. Brooke.  "Ah, there is Casaubon
again, and Tucker with him.  He is going to introduce Tucker.  You
don't know Tucker yet."

Mr. Tucker was the middle-aged curate, one of the "inferior clergy,"
who are usually not wanting in sons.  But after the introduction, the
conversation did not lead to any question about his family, and the
startling apparition of youthfulness was forgotten by every one but
Celia.  She inwardly declined to believe that the light-brown curls and
slim figure could have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as
old and musty-looking as she would have expected Mr. Casaubon's curate
to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to heaven (for Celia
wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so
unpleasant.  Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should
have to spend as bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no
pretty little children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.

Mr. Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had
not been without foresight on this head, the curate being able to
answer all Dorothea's questions about the villagers and the other
parishioners.  Everybody, he assured her, was well off in Lowick: not a
cottager in those double cottages at a low rent but kept a pig, and the
strips of garden at the back were well tended.  The small boys wore
excellent corduroy, the girls went out as tidy servants, or did a
little straw-plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though
the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards
spirituality, there was not much vice.  The speckled fowls were so
numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, "Your farmers leave some barley for
the women to glean, I see.  The poor folks here might have a fowl in
their pot, as the good French king used to wish for all his people.
The French eat a good many fowls--skinny fowls, you know."

"I think it was a very cheap wish of his," said Dorothea, indignantly.
"Are kings such monsters that a wish like that must be reckoned a royal
virtue?"

"And if he wished them a skinny fowl," said Celia, "that would not be
nice.  But perhaps he wished them to have fat fowls."

"Yes, but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was
subauditum; that is, present in the king's mind, but not uttered," said
Mr. Casaubon, smiling and bending his head towards Celia, who
immediately dropped backward a little, because she could not bear Mr.
Casaubon to blink at her.

Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house.  She felt some
disappointment, of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing
for her to do in Lowick; and in the next few minutes her mind had
glanced over the possibility, which she would have preferred, of
finding that her home would be in a parish which had a larger share of
the world's misery, so that she might have had more active duties in
it.  Then, recurring to the future actually before her, she made a
picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon's aims in which she
would await new duties.  Many such might reveal themselves to the
higher knowledge gained by her in that companionship.

Mr. Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not
allow him to lunch at the Hall; and as they were re-entering the garden
through the little gate, Mr. Casaubon said--

"You seem a little sad, Dorothea.  I trust you are pleased with what
you have seen."

"I am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong," answered
Dorothea, with her usual openness--"almost wishing that the people
wanted more to be done for them here.  I have known so few ways of
making my life good for anything.  Of course, my notions of usefulness
must be narrow.  I must learn new ways of helping people."

"Doubtless," said Mr. Casaubon.  "Each position has its corresponding
duties.  Yours, I trust, as the mistress of Lowick, will not leave any
yearning unfulfilled."

"Indeed, I believe that," said Dorothea, earnestly.  "Do not suppose
that I am sad."

"That is well.  But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to
the house than that by which we came."

Dorothea was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a
fine yew-tree, the chief hereditary glory of the grounds on this side
of the house.  As they approached it, a figure, conspicuous on a dark
background of evergreens, was seated on a bench, sketching the old
tree.  Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front with Celia, turned his
head, and said--

"Who is that youngster, Casaubon?"

They had come very near when Mr. Casaubon answered--

"That is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in
fact," he added, looking at Dorothea, "of the lady whose portrait you
have been noticing, my aunt Julia."

The young man had laid down his sketch-book and risen.  His bushy
light-brown curls, as well as his youthfulness, identified him at once
with Celia's apparition.

"Dorothea, let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw.  Will, this
is Miss Brooke."

The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea
could see a pair of gray eyes rather near together, a delicate
irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backward;
but there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect
than belonged to the type of the grandmother's miniature.  Young
Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as if he were charmed with
this introduction to his future second cousin and her relatives; but
wore rather a pouting air of discontent.

"You are an artist, I see," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketch-book
and turning it over in his unceremonious fashion.

"No, I only sketch a little.  There is nothing fit to be seen there,"
said young Ladislaw, coloring, perhaps with temper rather than modesty.

"Oh, come, this is a nice bit, now.  I did a little in this way myself
at one time, you know.  Look here, now; this is what I call a nice
thing, done with what we used to call _brio_." Mr. Brooke held out
towards the two girls a large colored sketch of stony ground and trees,
with a pool.

"I am no judge of these things," said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an
eager deprecation of the appeal to her.  "You know, uncle, I never see
the beauty of those pictures which you say are so much praised.  They
are a language I do not understand.  I suppose there is some relation
between pictures and nature which I am too ignorant to feel--just as
you see what a Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me."
Dorothea looked up at Mr. Casaubon, who bowed his head towards her,
while Mr. Brooke said, smiling nonchalantly--

"Bless me, now, how different people are!  But you had a bad style of
teaching, you know--else this is just the thing for girls--sketching,
fine art and so on.  But you took to drawing plans; you don't
understand morbidezza, and that kind of thing.  You will come to my
house, I hope, and I will show you what I did in this way," he
continued, turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his
preoccupation in observing Dorothea.  Ladislaw had made up his mind
that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry
Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have
confirmed that opinion even if he had believed her.  As it was, he took
her words for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his
sketch detestable.  There was too much cleverness in her apology: she
was laughing both at her uncle and himself.  But what a voice!  It was
like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp.  This
must be one of Nature's inconsistencies.  There could be no sort of
passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon.  But he turned from her,
and bowed his thanks for Mr. Brooke's invitation.

"We will turn over my Italian engravings together," continued that
good-natured man.  "I have no end of those things, that I have laid by
for years.  One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know.  Not
you, Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get
undermost--out of use, you know.  You clever young men must guard
against indolence.  I was too indolent, you know: else I might have
been anywhere at one time."

"That is a seasonable admonition," said Mr. Casaubon; "but now we will
pass on to the house, lest the young ladies should be tired of
standing."

When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his
sketching, and as he did so his face broke into an expression of
amusement which increased as he went on drawing, till at last he threw
back his head and laughed aloud.  Partly it was the reception of his
own artistic production that tickled him; partly the notion of his
grave cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke's
definition of the place he might have held but for the impediment of
indolence.  Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his
features very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and
had no mixture of sneering and self-exaltation.

"What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?" said Mr.
Brooke, as they went on.

"My cousin, you mean--not my nephew."

"Yes, yes, cousin.  But in the way of a career, you know."

"The answer to that question is painfully doubtful.  On leaving Rugby
he declined to go to an English university, where I would gladly have
placed him, and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of
studying at Heidelberg.  And now he wants to go abroad again, without
any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture,
preparation for he knows not what.  He declines to choose a profession."

"He has no means but what you furnish, I suppose."

"I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I
would furnish in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a
scholarly education, and launching him respectably.  I am-therefore
bound to fulfil the expectation so raised," said Mr. Casaubon, putting
his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which
Dorothea noticed with admiration.

"He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a
Mungo Park," said Mr. Brooke.  "I had a notion of that myself at one
time."

"No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our
geognosis: that would be a special purpose which I could recognize with
some approbation, though without felicitating him on a career which so
often ends in premature and violent death.  But so far is he from
having any desire for a more accurate knowledge of the earth's surface,
that he said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and
that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting grounds
for the poetic imagination."

"Well, there is something in that, you know," said Mr. Brooke, who had
certainly an impartial mind.

"It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and
indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury
for him in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far
submissive to ordinary rule as to choose one."

"Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness,"
said Dorothea, who was interesting herself in finding a favorable
explanation.  "Because the law and medicine should be very serious
professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes
depend on them."

"Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly
determined in his aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady
application, and to that kind of acquirement which is needful
instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to
self-indulgent taste.  I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has
stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work
regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or
acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience.  I have
pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years
preparatory to a work not yet accomplished.  But in vain.  To careful
reasoning of this kind he replies by calling himself Pegasus, and every
form of prescribed work 'harness.'"

Celia laughed.  She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say
something quite amusing.

"Well, you know, he may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a
Churchill--that sort of thing--there's no telling," said Mr. Brooke.
"Shall you let him go to Italy, or wherever else he wants to go?"

"Yes; I have agreed to furnish him with moderate supplies for a year or
so; he asks no more.  I shall let him be tried by the test of freedom."

"That is very kind of you," said Dorothea, looking up at Mr. Casaubon
with delight.  "It is noble.  After all, people may really have in them
some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not?
They may seem idle and weak because they are growing.  We should be
very patient with each other, I think."

"I suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you think
patience good," said Celia, as soon as she and Dorothea were alone
together, taking off their wrappings.

"You mean that I am very impatient, Celia."

"Yes; when people don't do and say just what you like." Celia had
become less afraid of "saying things" to Dorothea since this
engagement: cleverness seemed to her more pitiable than ever.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: To Mr. Brookes satisfaction, Casaubon draws up a generous marriage settlement for Dorothea. He then drives with her family to his estate, Lowick Manor for her inspection of it. Casaubon has initially held only the parsonage on the estate, being the second son. On his elder brothers death, he has got the rest of the large estate. Likewise, he has a large fortune from his mothers family, particularly as her sister had been cast off after her "unsuitable" marriage. The greenstone house, its carelessly tended gardens, gloomy yew-trees and "air of autumnal decline", depresses Celia. An obvious parallel to Casaubon himself, the gloomy estate has no such negative effect on Dorotheas puritanical tastes. She is grateful for his offer to make any alterations she likes but declines the offer. Basking in the halo of "lady of the manor," decorating and showing off her home, are not pleasures, which interest her. They examine portraits of Casaubons mother, who looks like him; and his aunt, who has a delicate and unusual face. This second portrait looks "pretty" to Celia, and merely "peculiar" to Dorothea. Dorothea meets the curate, Mr. Casaubons assistant, who assures her the villagers of Lowick are well off. The cottages are well constructed, the people are well fed and clothed and even have savings put aside. This immediately disappoints Dorothea, who hoped to be a reforming influence in her husbands parish. This is promptly followed by shame at her own selfishness. They walk around the grounds and see a young man sketching a tree. This is Will Ladislaw, Casaubons young cousin, and grandson of the pretty lady in the portrait. He accepts the introduction to the Brooke family rather ungraciously. Brooke takes a fancy to him and gives him a long and confused speech on art. Casaubon later explains that he is financing Wills education, and that he has preferred Heiddberg University to any of the English ones. Dorothea is impressed by Casaubons generosity. They all discuss his future career - Casaubon with disapproval and Brooke with sympathy. Dorothea tries to be tolerant of Wills apparent "idleness." The visit ends.