prompt:
Chapter: "All that in woman is adored
       In thy fair self I find--
     For the whole sex can but afford
       The handsome and the kind."
                        --SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.

The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplain
to the hospital was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers; and
Lydgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on the power
exercised in the town by Mr. Bulstrode.  The banker was evidently a
ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among his supporters
there were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was a
compromise, and who frankly stated their impression that the general
scheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade, required you
to hold a candle to the devil.

Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a country banker,
who knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town and could
touch the springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficence
that was at once ready and severe--ready to confer obligations, and
severe in watching the result.  He had gathered, as an industrious man
always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities,
and his private charities were both minute and abundant.  He would take
a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker's son, and
he would watch over Tegg's church-going; he would defend Mrs. Strype
the washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her
drying-ground, and he would himself scrutinize a calumny against Mrs.
Strype.  His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire
strictly into the circumstances both before and after.  In this way a
man gathers a domain in his neighbors' hope and fear as well as
gratitude; and power, when once it has got into that subtle region,
propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its external
means.  It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power as
possible, that he might use it for the glory of God.  He went through a
great deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust
his motives, and make clear to himself what God's glory required.  But,
as we have seen, his motives were not always rightly appreciated.
There were many crass minds in Middlemarch whose reflective scales
could only weigh things in the lump; and they had a strong suspicion
that since Mr. Bulstrode could not enjoy life in their fashion, eating
and drinking so little as he did, and worreting himself about
everything, he must have a sort of vampire's feast in the sense of
mastery.

The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Vincy's table when Lydgate
was dining there, and the family connection with Mr. Bulstrode did not,
he observed, prevent some freedom of remark even on the part of the
host himself, though his reasons against the proposed arrangement
turned entirely on his objection to Mr. Tyke's sermons, which were all
doctrine, and his preference for Mr. Farebrother, whose sermons were
free from that taint.  Mr. Vincy liked well enough the notion of the
chaplain's having a salary, supposing it were given to Farebrother, who
was as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best preacher
anywhere, and companionable too.

"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner, a
great coursing comrade of Mr. Vincy's.

"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now.  I shall vote
for referring the matter to the Directors and the Medical Board
together.  I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders,
Doctor," said Mr. Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the senior
physician of the town, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite.  "You
medical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you will
prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"

"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointments
are apt to be made too much a question of personal liking.  The fittest
man for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the most
agreeable.  Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only way
would be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of, and
put them out of the question."

Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight," though
Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration," divested his
large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while
Lydgate was speaking.  Whatever was not problematical and suspected
about this young man--for example, a certain showiness as to foreign
ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and
forgotten by his elders--was positively unwelcome to a physician whose
standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on
Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.
For my part I have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague: one's
self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very
unpleasant to find deprecated.

Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company.  Mr.
Vincy said, that if he could have _his_ way, he would not put
disagreeable fellows anywhere.

"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely.  "There's no greater humbug in
the world.  You never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to put
in new men.  I hope you are not one of the 'Lancet's' men, Mr.
Lydgate--wanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the legal
profession: your words appear to point that way."

"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: he is
an ill-intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability of
the profession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges,
for the sake of getting some notoriety for himself.  There are men who
don't mind about being kicked blue if they can only get talked about.
But Wakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added, judicially.  "I could
mention one or two points in which Wakley is in the right."

"Oh, well," said Mr. Chichely, "I blame no man for standing up in favor
of his own cloth; but, coming to argument, I should like to know how a
coroner is to judge of evidence if he has not had a legal training?"

"In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man more
incompetent in questions that require knowledge a of another kind.
People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales
by a blind Justice.  No man can judge what is good evidence on any
particular subject, unless he knows that subject well.  A lawyer is no
better than an old woman at a post-mortem examination.  How is he to
know the action of a poison?  You might as well say that scanning verse
will teach you to scan the potato crops."

"You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business to
conduct the post-mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medical
witness?" said Mr. Chichely, with some scorn.

"Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself," said Lydgate.
"Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance
of decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not to
be a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of the
stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so."

Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was his
Majesty's coroner, and ended innocently with the question, "Don't you
agree with me, Dr. Sprague?"

"To a certain extent--with regard to populous districts, and in the
metropolis," said the Doctor.  "But I hope it will be long before this
part of the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even
though it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him.  I
am sure Vincy will agree with me."

"Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man," said Mr.
Vincy, jovially.  "And in my opinion, you're safest with a lawyer.
Nobody can know everything. Most things are 'visitation of God.' And as
to poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall we
join the ladies?"

Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the very
coroner without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had not
meant to be personal.  This was one of the difficulties of moving in
good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a
qualification for any salaried office.  Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a
prig, and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prick-eared;
especially when, in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himself
eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a
tete-a-tete, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She
resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron's
blooming good-natured face, with the two volatile pink strings floating
from her fine throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children,
was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy
house--attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with
the daughter.  The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in
Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's refinement, which was beyond
what Lydgate had expected.

Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression
of refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly
right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid.
And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with that
sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous.
Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most
decisive mark of her cleverness.

She and Lydgate readily got into conversation.  He regretted that he
had not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court.  The only pleasure
he allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to
go and hear music.

"You have studied music, probably?" said Rosamond.

"No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear;
but the music that I don't know at all, and have no notion about,
delights me--affects me.  How stupid the world is that it does not make
more use of such a pleasure within its reach!"

"Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless.  There are hardly
any good musicians.  I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well."

"I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way,
leaving you to fancy the tune--very much as if it were tapped on a
drum?"

"Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer," said Rosamond, with one of her rare
smiles.  "But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors."

Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation,
in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to be
made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as if
the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her;
and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready,
self-possessed grace.  Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate
had lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longer
attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite.  But he recalled
himself.

"You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope."

"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond.  "Papa
is sure to insist on my singing.  But I shall tremble before you, who
have heard the best singers in Paris.  I have heard very little: I have
only once been to London.  But our organist at St. Peter's is a good
musician, and I go on studying with him."

"Tell me what you saw in London."

"Very little."  (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!"
But Rosamond knew better.) "A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw
country girls are always taken to."

"Do you call yourself a raw country girl?" said Lydgate, looking at her
with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush
with pleasure.  But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a
little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits--an
habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's paw.
Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph
caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon's.

"I assure you my mind is raw," she said immediately; "I pass at
Middlemarch.  I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors.  But I
am really afraid of you."

"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her
knowledge is of a different sort.  I am sure you could teach me a
thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were
any common language between them.  Happily, there is a common language
between women and men, and so the bears can get taught."

"Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum!  I must go and hinder him from
jarring all your nerves," said Rosamond, moving to the other side of
the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father's desire,
that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically
performing "Cherry Ripe!" with one hand.  Able men who have passed
their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the
plucked Fred.

"Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr.
Lydgate ill," said Rosamond.  "He has an ear."

Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.

Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, "You perceive,
the bears will not always be taught."

"Now then, Rosy!" said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it
upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment.  "Some good
rousing tunes first."

Rosamond played admirably.  Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to
a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church
and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be
found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted
Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of
musical celebrity.  Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized
his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble
music with the precision of an echo.  It was almost startling, heard
for the first time.  A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from
Rosamond's fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in
perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an
originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter.  Lydgate
was taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something
exceptional.  After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find
the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently
unfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on conditions that
are not obvious.  He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her
any compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was
deepened.

Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet to
hear as a chime perfectly in tune.  It is true she sang "Meet me by
moonlight," and "I've been roaming"; for mortals must share the
fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always
classical.  But Rosamond could also sing "Black-eyed Susan" with
effect, or Haydn's canzonets, or "Voi, che sapete," or "Batti,
batti"--she only wanted to know what her audience liked.

Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration.
Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest
little girl on her lap, softly beating the child's hand up and down in
time to the music.  And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism
about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he
could do the same thing on his flute.  It was the pleasantest family
party that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch.  The Vincys
had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and the
belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most
county towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certain
suspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survived
in the provinces.  At the Vincys' there was always whist, and the
card-tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretly
impatient of the music.  Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in--a
handsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose
black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick gray
eyes.  He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little
Louisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by
Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming to
condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the
evening.  He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come
and see him.  "I can't let you off, you know, because I have some
beetles to show you.  We collectors feel an interest in every new man
till he has seen all we have to show him."

But soon he swerved to the whist-table, rubbing his hands and saying,
"Come now, let us be serious!  Mr. Lydgate? not play?  Ah! you are too
young and light for this kind of thing."

Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so
painful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort in
this certainly not erudite household.  He could half understand it: the
good-humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision for
passing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make the
house beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.

Everything looked blooming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who was
brown, dull, and resigned, and altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said,
just the sort of person for a governess.  Lydgate did not mean to pay
many such visits himself.  They were a wretched waste of the evenings;
and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to
excuse himself and go.

"You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when the
whist-players were settled.  "We are very stupid, and you have been
used to something quite different."

"I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike," said Lydgate.
"But I have noticed that one always believes one's own town to be more
stupid than any other.  I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as
it comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the
same way.  I have certainly found some charms in it which are much
greater than I had expected."

"You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased
with those," said Rosamond, with simplicity.

"No, I mean something much nearer to me."

Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, "Do you care
about dancing at all?  I am not quite sure whether clever men ever
dance."

"I would dance with you if you would allow me."

"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh.  "I was only
going to say that we sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to know
whether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come."

"Not on the condition I mentioned."

After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on moving
towards the whist-tables, he got interested in watching Mr.
Farebrother's play, which was masterly, and also his face, which was a
striking mixture of the shrewd and the mild.  At ten o'clock supper was
brought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and there was
punch-drinking; but Mr. Farebrother had only a glass of water.  He was
winning, but there seemed to be no reason why the renewal of rubbers
should end, and Lydgate at last took his leave.

But as it was not eleven o'clock, he chose to walk in the brisk air
towards the tower of St. Botolph's, Mr. Farebrother's church, which
stood out dark, square, and massive against the starlight.  It was the
oldest church in Middlemarch; the living, however, was but a vicarage
worth barely four hundred a-year. Lydgate had heard that, and he
wondered now whether Mr. Farebrother cared about the money he won at
cards; thinking, "He seems a very pleasant fellow, but Bulstrode may
have his good reasons."  Many things would be easier to Lydgate if it
should turn out that Mr. Bulstrode was generally justifiable.  "What is
his religious doctrine to me, if he carries some good notions along
with it?  One must use such brains as are to be found."

These were actually Lydgate's first meditations as he walked away from
Mr. Vincy's, and on this ground I fear that many ladies will consider
him hardly worthy of their attention.  He thought of Rosamond and her
music only in the second place; and though, when her turn came, he
dwelt on the image of her for the rest of his walk, he felt no
agitation, and had no sense that any new current had set into his life.
He could not marry yet; he wished not to marry for several years; and
therefore he was not ready to entertain the notion of being in love
with a girl whom he happened to admire.  He did admire Rosamond
exceedingly; but that madness which had once beset him about Laure was
not, he thought, likely to recur in relation to any other woman.
Certainly, if falling in love had been at all in question, it would
have been quite safe with a creature like this Miss Vincy, who had just
the kind of intelligence one would desire in a woman--polished,
refined, docile, lending itself to finish in all the delicacies of
life, and enshrined in a body which expressed this with a force of
demonstration that excluded the need for other evidence.  Lydgate felt
sure that if ever he married, his wife would have that feminine
radiance, that distinctive womanhood which must be classed with flowers
and music, that sort of beauty which by its very nature was virtuous,
being moulded only for pure and delicate joys.

But since he did not mean to marry for the next five years--his more
pressing business was to look into Louis' new book on Fever, which he
was specially interested in, because he had known Louis in Paris, and
had followed many anatomical demonstrations in order to ascertain the
specific differences of typhus and typhoid.  He went home and read far
into the smallest hour, bringing a much more testing vision of details
and relations into this pathological study than he had ever thought it
necessary to apply to the complexities of love and marriage, these
being subjects on which he felt himself amply informed by literature,
and that traditional wisdom which is handed down in the genial
conversation of men.  Whereas Fever had obscure conditions, and gave
him that delightful labor of the imagination which is not mere
arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power--combining and
constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest
obedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance with
impartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try its
own work.

Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of
their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration:--reports
of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer
coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and
spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to
reflect life in a diseased dream.  But these kinds of inspiration
Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the
imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of
lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of
necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of
Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally
illuminated space.  He for his part had tossed away all cheap
inventions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease: he was
enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research,
provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more
exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those
minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible
thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and
crime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth of
happy or unhappy consciousness.

As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the
grate, and clasped his hands at the back of his head, in that agreeable
afterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a
specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the
rest of our existence--seems, as it were, to throw itself on its back
after vigorous swimming and float with the repose of unexhausted
strength--Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and
something like pity for those less lucky men who were not of his
profession.

"If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad," he thought, "I might
have got into some stupid draught-horse work or other, and lived always
in blinkers.  I should never have been happy in any profession that did
not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good
warm contact with my neighbors.  There is nothing like the medical
profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that
touches the distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too.  It
is rather harder for a clergyman: Farebrother seems to be an anomaly."

This last thought brought back the Vincys and all the pictures of the
evening.  They floated in his mind agreeably enough, and as he took up
his bed-candle his lips were curled with that incipient smile which is
apt to accompany agreeable recollections.  He was an ardent fellow, but
at present his ardor was absorbed in love of his work and in the
ambition of making his life recognized as a factor in the better life
of mankind--like other heroes of science who had nothing but an obscure
country practice to begin with.

Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond!  Each lived in a world of
which the other knew nothing.  It had not occurred to Lydgate that he
had been a subject of eager meditation to Rosamond, who had neither any
reason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective, nor any
pathological studies to divert her mind from that ruminating habit,
that inward repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes a
large part in the lives of most girls.  He had not meant to look at her
or speak to her with more than the inevitable amount of admiration and
compliment which a man must give to a beautiful girl; indeed, it seemed
to him that his enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent, for
he feared falling into the rudeness of telling her his great surprise
at her possession of such accomplishment.  But Rosamond had registered
every look and word, and estimated them as the opening incidents of a
preconceived romance--incidents which gather value from the foreseen
development and climax.  In Rosamond's romance it was not necessary to
imagine much about the inward life of the hero, or of his serious
business in the world: of course, he had a profession and was clever,
as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate
was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch
admirers, and presented marriage as a prospect of rising in rank and
getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which
she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last
associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked
down on the Middlemarchers.  It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to
discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and once when she had
seen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes,
and seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them, notwithstanding
their plain dress.

If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of family
could cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with the
sense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your power
of comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red cloth
and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort.  Our passions do
not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe
of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together,
feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

Rosamond, in fact, was entirely occupied not exactly with Tertius
Lydgate as he was in himself, but with his relation to her; and it was
excusable in a girl who was accustomed to hear that all young men
might, could, would be, or actually were in love with her, to believe
at once that Lydgate could be no exception.  His looks and words meant
more to her than other men's, because she cared more for them: she
thought of them diligently, and diligently attended to that perfection
of appearance, behavior, sentiments, and all other elegancies, which
would find in Lydgate a more adequate admirer than she had yet been
conscious of.

For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeable
to her, was industrious; and now more than ever she was active in
sketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, in
practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own
standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own
consciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a more
variable external audience in the numerous visitors of the house.  She
found time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, and
she knew much poetry by heart.  Her favorite poem was "Lalla Rookh."

"The best girl in the world!  He will be a happy fellow who gets her!"
was the sentiment of the elderly gentlemen who visited the Vincys; and
the rejected young men thought of trying again, as is the fashion in
country towns where the horizon is not thick with coming rivals.  But
Mrs. Plymdale thought that Rosamond had been educated to a ridiculous
pitch, for what was the use of accomplishments which would be all laid
aside as soon as she was married?  While her aunt Bulstrode, who had a
sisterly faithfulness towards her brother's family, had two sincere
wishes for Rosamond--that she might show a more serious turn of mind,
and that she might meet with a husband whose wealth corresponded to her
habits.

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

completion: Mr. Bulstrode's power becomes plain; as a banker, he has some control over those he lends money to, and he defends people in return for certain expected favors. There is a debate going on whether Bulstrode's choice of Mr. Tyke for the chaplain's position at the hospital is indeed correct; Lydgate, Mr. Vincy, Mr. Chichely, and Dr. Sprague debate this question, with Mr. Vincy firmly supporting Farebrother. Lydgate is soon able to sneak away and talk with Rosamond, whom he finds very refined and beautiful. He meets Farebrother, whom he also finds agreeable. Lydgate is in no hurry to marry, since he has no money yet; but he will certainly keep Rosamond in mind in the meantime. Rosamond, however, is sure that Lydgate is in love with her; and, with little else to think about, she sets her mind on marrying Lydgate.


prompt:
Chapter: "The clerkly person smiled and said
     Promise was a pretty maid,
     But being poor she died unwed."

The Rev. Camden Farebrother, whom Lydgate went to see the next evening,
lived in an old parsonage, built of stone, venerable enough to match
the church which it looked out upon.  All the furniture too in the
house was old, but with another grade of age--that of Mr. Farebrother's
father and grandfather.  There were painted white chairs, with gilding
and wreaths on them, and some lingering red silk damask with slits in
it.  There were engraved portraits of Lord Chancellors and other
celebrated lawyers of the last century; and there were old pier-glasses
to reflect them, as well as the little satin-wood tables and the sofas
resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief
against the dark wainscot. This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room
into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive
him, who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine
respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white-haired mother,
befrilled and kerchiefed with dainty cleanliness, upright, quick-eyed,
and still under seventy; Miss Noble, her sister, a tiny old lady of
meeker aspect, with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn and mended;
and Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister, well-looking
like himself, but nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who
spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders.  Lydgate
had not expected to see so quaint a group: knowing simply that Mr.
Farebrother was a bachelor, he had thought of being ushered into a
snuggery where the chief furniture would probably be books and
collections of natural objects.  The Vicar himself seemed to wear
rather a changed aspect, as most men do when acquaintances made
elsewhere see them for the first time in their own homes; some indeed
showing like an actor of genial parts disadvantageously cast for the
curmudgeon in a new piece.  This was not the case with Mr. Farebrother:
he seemed a trifle milder and more silent, the chief talker being his
mother, while he only put in a good-humored moderating remark here and
there.  The old lady was evidently accustomed to tell her company what
they ought to think, and to regard no subject as quite safe without her
steering.  She was afforded leisure for this function by having all her
little wants attended to by Miss Winifred.  Meanwhile tiny Miss Noble
carried on her arm a small basket, into which she diverted a bit of
sugar, which she had first dropped in her saucer as if by mistake;
looking round furtively afterwards, and reverting to her teacup with a
small innocent noise as of a tiny timid quadruped.  Pray think no ill
of Miss Noble.  That basket held small savings from her more portable
food, destined for the children of her poor friends among whom she
trotted on fine mornings; fostering and petting all needy creatures
being so spontaneous a delight to her, that she regarded it much as if
it had been a pleasant vice that she was addicted to.  Perhaps she was
conscious of being tempted to steal from those who had much that she
might give to those who had nothing, and carried in her conscience the
guilt of that repressed desire.  One must be poor to know the luxury of
giving!

Mrs. Farebrother welcomed the guest with a lively formality and
precision.  She presently informed him that they were not often in want
of medical aid in that house.  She had brought up her children to wear
flannel and not to over-eat themselves, which last habit she considered
the chief reason why people needed doctors.  Lydgate pleaded for those
whose fathers and mothers had over-eaten themselves, but Mrs.
Farebrother held that view of things dangerous: Nature was more just
than that; it would be easy for any felon to say that his ancestors
ought to have been hanged instead of him.  If those who had bad fathers
and mothers were bad themselves, they were hanged for that.  There was
no need to go back on what you couldn't see.

"My mother is like old George the Third," said the Vicar, "she objects
to metaphysics."

"I object to what is wrong, Camden.  I say, keep hold of a few plain
truths, and make everything square with them.  When I was young, Mr.
Lydgate, there never was any question about right and wrong.  We knew
our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty.
Every respectable Church person had the same opinions.  But now, if you
speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted."

"That makes rather a pleasant time of it for those who like to maintain
their own point," said Lydgate.

"But my mother always gives way," said the Vicar, slyly.

"No, no, Camden, you must not lead Mr. Lydgate into a mistake about
_me_. I shall never show that disrespect to my parents, to give up what
they taught me.  Any one may see what comes of turning.  If you change
once, why not twenty times?"

"A man might see good arguments for changing once, and not see them for
changing again," said Lydgate, amused with the decisive old lady.

"Excuse me there.  If you go upon arguments, they are never wanting,
when a man has no constancy of mind.  My father never changed, and he
preached plain moral sermons without arguments, and was a good man--few
better.  When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get
you a good dinner with reading you the cookery-book. That's my opinion,
and I think anybody's stomach will bear me out."

"About the dinner certainly, mother," said Mr. Farebrother.

"It is the same thing, the dinner or the man.  I am nearly seventy, Mr.
Lydgate, and I go upon experience.  I am not likely to follow new
lights, though there are plenty of them here as elsewhere.  I say, they
came in with the mixed stuffs that will neither wash nor wear.  It was
not so in my youth: a Churchman was a Churchman, and a clergyman, you
might be pretty sure, was a gentleman, if nothing else.  But now he may
be no better than a Dissenter, and want to push aside my son on
pretence of doctrine.  But whoever may wish to push him aside, I am
proud to say, Mr. Lydgate, that he will compare with any preacher in
this kingdom, not to speak of this town, which is but a low standard to
go by; at least, to my thinking, for I was born and bred at Exeter."

"A mother is never partial," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.  "What do
you think Tyke's mother says about him?"

"Ah, poor creature! what indeed?" said Mrs. Farebrother, her sharpness
blunted for the moment by her confidence in maternal judgments.  "She
says the truth to herself, depend upon it."

"And what is the truth?" said Lydgate. "I am curious to know."

"Oh, nothing bad at all," said Mr. Farebrother.  "He is a zealous
fellow: not very learned, and not very wise, I think--because I don't
agree with him."

"Why, Camden!" said Miss Winifred, "Griffin and his wife told me only
to-day, that Mr. Tyke said they should have no more coals if they came
to hear you preach."

Mrs. Farebrother laid down her knitting, which she had resumed after
her small allowance of tea and toast, and looked at her son as if to
say "You hear that?"  Miss Noble said, "Oh poor things! poor things!"
in reference, probably, to the double loss of preaching and coal.  But
the Vicar answered quietly--

"That is because they are not my parishioners.  And I don't think my
sermons are worth a load of coals to them."

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mrs. Farebrother, who could not let this pass, "you
don't know my son: he always undervalues himself.  I tell him he is
undervaluing the God who made him, and made him a most excellent
preacher."

"That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lydgate away to my study,
mother," said the Vicar, laughing.  "I promised to show you my
collection," he added, turning to Lydgate; "shall we go?"

All three ladies remonstrated.  Mr. Lydgate ought not to be hurried
away without being allowed to accept another cup of tea: Miss Winifred
had abundance of good tea in the pot.  Why was Camden in such haste to
take a visitor to his den?  There was nothing but pickled vermin, and
drawers full of blue-bottles and moths, with no carpet on the floor.
Mr. Lydgate must excuse it.  A game at cribbage would be far better.
In short, it was plain that a vicar might be adored by his womankind as
the king of men and preachers, and yet be held by them to stand in much
need of their direction.  Lydgate, with the usual shallowness of a
young bachelor, wondered that Mr. Farebrother had not taught them
better.

"My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest
in my hobbies," said the Vicar, as he opened the door of his study,
which was indeed as bare of luxuries for the body as the ladies had
implied, unless a short porcelain pipe and a tobacco-box were to be
excepted.

"Men of your profession don't generally smoke," he said.  Lydgate
smiled and shook his head.  "Nor of mine either, properly, I suppose.
You will hear that pipe alleged against me by Bulstrode and Company.
They don't know how pleased the devil would be if I gave it up."

"I understand.  You are of an excitable temper and want a sedative.  I
am heavier, and should get idle with it.  I should rush into idleness,
and stagnate there with all my might."

"And you mean to give it all to your work.  I am some ten or twelve
years older than you, and have come to a compromise.  I feed a weakness
or two lest they should get clamorous.  See," continued the Vicar,
opening several small drawers, "I fancy I have made an exhaustive study
of the entomology of this district.  I am going on both with the fauna
and flora; but I have at least done my insects well.  We are singularly
rich in orthoptera: I don't know whether--Ah! you have got hold of that
glass jar--you are looking into that instead of my drawers.  You don't
really care about these things?"

"Not by the side of this lovely anencephalous monster.  I have never
had time to give myself much to natural history.  I was early bitten
with an interest in structure, and it is what lies most directly in my
profession.  I have no hobby besides.  I have the sea to swim in there."

"Ah! you are a happy fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, turning on his heel
and beginning to fill his pipe.  "You don't know what it is to want
spiritual tobacco--bad emendations of old texts, or small items about a
variety of Aphis Brassicae, with the well-known signature of
Philomicron, for the 'Twaddler's Magazine;' or a learned treatise on
the entomology of the Pentateuch, including all the insects not
mentioned, but probably met with by the Israelites in their passage
through the desert; with a monograph on the Ant, as treated by Solomon,
showing the harmony of the Book of Proverbs with the results of modern
research.  You don't mind my fumigating you?"

Lydgate was more surprised at the openness of this talk than at its
implied meaning--that the Vicar felt himself not altogether in the
right vocation.  The neat fitting-up of drawers and shelves, and the
bookcase filled with expensive illustrated books on Natural History,
made him think again of the winnings at cards and their destination.
But he was beginning to wish that the very best construction of
everything that Mr. Farebrother did should be the true one.  The
Vicar's frankness seemed not of the repulsive sort that comes from an
uneasy consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but
simply the relief of a desire to do with as little pretence as
possible.  Apparently he was not without a sense that his freedom of
speech might seem premature, for he presently said--

"I have not yet told you that I have the advantage of you, Mr. Lydgate,
and know you better than you know me.  You remember Trawley who shared
your apartment at Paris for some time?  I was a correspondent of his,
and he told me a good deal about you.  I was not quite sure when you
first came that you were the same man.  I was very glad when I found
that you were.  Only I don't forget that you have not had the like
prologue about me."

Lydgate divined some delicacy of feeling here, but did not half
understand it.  "By the way," he said, "what has become of Trawley?  I
have quite lost sight of him.  He was hot on the French social systems,
and talked of going to the Backwoods to found a sort of Pythagorean
community.  Is he gone?"

"Not at all.  He is practising at a German bath, and has married a rich
patient."

"Then my notions wear the best, so far," said Lydgate, with a short
scornful laugh.  "He would have it, the medical profession was an
inevitable system of humbug.  I said, the fault was in the men--men who
truckle to lies and folly.  Instead of preaching against humbug outside
the walls, it might be better to set up a disinfecting apparatus
within.  In short--I am reporting my own conversation--you may be sure
I had all the good sense on my side."

"Your scheme is a good deal more difficult to carry out than the
Pythagorean community, though.  You have not only got the old Adam in
yourself against you, but you have got all those descendants of the
original Adam who form the society around you.  You see, I have paid
twelve or thirteen years more than you for my knowledge of
difficulties.  But"--Mr. Farebrother broke off a moment, and then
added, "you are eying that glass vase again.  Do you want to make an
exchange?  You shall not have it without a fair barter."

"I have some sea-mice--fine specimens--in spirits.  And I will throw in
Robert Brown's new thing--'Microscopic Observations on the Pollen of
Plants'--if you don't happen to have it already."

"Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price.
Suppose I ask you to look through my drawers and agree with me about
all my new species?"  The Vicar, while he talked in this way,
alternately moved about with his pipe in his mouth, and returned to
hang rather fondly over his drawers.  "That would be good discipline,
you know, for a young doctor who has to please his patients in
Middlemarch.  You must learn to be bored, remember.  However, you shall
have the monster on your own terms."

"Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody's
nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humor?" said
Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently
at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in
exquisite writing.  "The shortest way is to make your value felt, so
that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not."

"With all my heart.  But then you must be sure of having the value, and
you must keep yourself independent.  Very few men can do that.  Either
you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you
wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you.
But do look at these delicate orthoptera!"

Lydgate had after all to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the Vicar
laughing at himself, and yet persisting in the exhibition.

"Apropos of what you said about wearing harness," Lydgate began, after
they had sat down, "I made up my mind some time ago to do with as
little of it as possible. That was why I determined not to try anything
in London, for a good many years at least.  I didn't like what I saw
when I was studying there--so much empty bigwiggism, and obstructive
trickery.  In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge,
and are less of companions, but for that reason they affect one's
amour-propre less: one makes less bad blood, and can follow one's own
course more quietly."

"Yes--well--you have got a good start; you are in the right profession,
the work you feel yourself most fit for.  Some people miss that, and
repent too late.  But you must not be too sure of keeping your
independence."

"You mean of family ties?" said Lydgate, conceiving that these might
press rather tightly on Mr. Farebrother.

"Not altogether.  Of course they make many things more difficult.  But
a good wife--a good unworldly woman--may really help a man, and keep
him more independent.  There's a parishioner of mine--a fine fellow,
but who would hardly have pulled through as he has done without his
wife.  Do you know the Garths?  I think they were not Peacock's
patients."

"No; but there is a Miss Garth at old Featherstone's, at Lowick."

"Their daughter: an excellent girl."

"She is very quiet--I have hardly noticed her."

"She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it."

"I don't understand," said Lydgate; he could hardly say "Of course."

"Oh, she gauges everybody.  I prepared her for confirmation--she is a
favorite of mine."

Mr. Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to
know more about the Garths.  At last the Vicar laid down his pipe,
stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards
Lydgate, saying--

"But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be.  We have
our intrigues and our parties.  I am a party man, for example, and
Bulstrode is another.  If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode."

"What is there against Bulstrode?" said Lydgate, emphatically.

"I did not say there was anything against him except that.  If you vote
against him you will make him your enemy."

"I don't know that I need mind about that," said Lydgate, rather
proudly; "but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals, and he
spends large sums on useful public objects.  He might help me a good
deal in carrying out my ideas.  As to his religious notions--why, as
Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if
administered with a certain quantity of arsenic.  I look for the man
who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations."

"Very good.  But then you must not offend your arsenic-man. You will
not offend me, you know," said Mr. Farebrother, quite unaffectedly.  "I
don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties.  I am
opposed to Bulstrode in many ways.  I don't like the set he belongs to:
they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbors
uncomfortable than to make them better.  Their system is a sort of
worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as
a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven.  But," he added,
smilingly, "I don't say that Bulstrode's new hospital is a bad thing;
and as to his wanting to oust me from the old one--why, if he thinks me
a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment.  And I am not
a model clergyman--only a decent makeshift."

Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself.  A model
clergyman, like a model doctor, ought to think his own profession the
finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his
moral pathology and therapeutics.  He only said, "What reason does
Bulstrode give for superseding you?"

"That I don't teach his opinions--which he calls spiritual religion;
and that I have no time to spare.  Both statements are true.  But then
I could make time, and I should be glad of the forty pounds.  That is
the plain fact of the case.  But let us dismiss it.  I only wanted to
tell you that if you vote for your arsenic-man, you are not to cut me
in consequence.  I can't spare you.  You are a sort of circumnavigator
come to settle among us, and will keep up my belief in the antipodes.
Now tell me all about them in Paris."

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

completion: Lydgate goes to see Farebrother at home, and observes his domestic situation. Farebrother's mother engages Lydgate in a debate about changes in religion, which Farebrother and Lydgate seem to espouse. Farebrother is a man of science, like Lydgate; they get along well, which makes Lydgate question Bulstrode's championing of Mr. Tyke even more. However, Farebrother is knowledgeable about Middlemarch politics, and knows that Lydgate must vote with Bulstrode if he wants to get ahead; Lydgate listens to this advice, but wants to vote with his conscience instead.


prompt:
Chapter: "Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
     Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
     Breathing bad air, ran risk of pestilence;
     Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
     May languish with the scurvy."

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the
chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without
telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which
side he should give his vote.  It would really have been a matter of
total indifference to him--that is to say, he would have taken the more
convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without
any hesitation--if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing
acquaintanceship.  That, entering into Lydgate's position as a
new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr.
Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain
his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which
Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to.  It went along with other points
of conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made
his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided
between natural grandeur and social slovenliness.  Very few men could
have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and
sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life rather
uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs are
so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interested
desires in a pretext of better motives.  In these matters he was
conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps
the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical
strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve
their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account
for their actions.  Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like
the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons
were delivered without book.  People outside his parish went to hear
him; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult part
of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense
of superiority.  Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered,
ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other
conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our
friends.  Lydgate liked him heartily, and wished for his friendship.

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the
chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper
business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for
his vote.  Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down plans
for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were
often in consultation.  The banker was always presupposing that he
could count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special
recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother.  When
the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had
notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of
the directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had
a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch
business.  He could not help hearing within him the distinct
declaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affair
was a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally
pronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office.  For his
observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance that
the banker would not overlook opposition.  "Confound their petty
politics!" was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative
process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold
a court of conscience on this matter.  Certainly there were valid
things to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had too
much on his hands already, especially considering how much time he
spent on non-clerical occupations.  Then again it was a continually
repeated shock, disturbing Lydgate's esteem, that the Vicar should
obviously play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but
evidently liking some end which it served.  Mr. Farebrother contended
on theory for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen's
wit was stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he
would have played very much less but for the money.  There was a
billiard-room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives
regarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch.  The Vicar was a
first-rate billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the Green
Dragon, there were reports that he had sometimes been there in the
daytime and had won money.  And as to the chaplaincy, he did not
pretend that he cared for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds.
Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money
at it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of
life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small
sums thoroughly hateful to him.  Hitherto in his own life his wants had
been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was
always to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a
gentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting
half-crowns.  He had always known in a general way that he was not
rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the
part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men.
Money had never been a motive to him.  Hence he was not ready to frame
excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains.  It was altogether
repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the
ratio between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessary
expenditure.  It was possible that he would not have made such a
calculation in his own case.

And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told
more strongly against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before.  One
would know much better what to do if men's characters were more
consistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for any
function they desired to undertake!  Lydgate was convinced that if
there had been no valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would have
voted for him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: he
did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the other hand, there
was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply
curate at a chapel of ease in St. Peter's parish, and had time for
extra duty.  Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except that
they could not bear him, and suspected him of cant.  Really, from his
point of view, Bulstrode was thoroughly justified.

But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make
him wince; and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being
obliged to wince.  He did not like frustrating his own best purposes by
getting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like voting against
Farebrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary; and the
question occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leave
the Vicar free from that ignoble care about winning at cards.
Moreover, Lydgate did not like the consciousness that in voting for
Tyke he should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself.
But would the end really be his own convenience?  Other people would
say so, and would allege that he was currying favor with Bulstrode for
the sake of making himself important and getting on in the world.  What
then?  He for his own part knew that if his personal prospects simply
had been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for the
banker's friendship or enmity.  What he really cared for was a medium
for his work, a vehicle for his ideas; and after all, was he not bound
to prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could
demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic
results, before anything else connected with this chaplaincy?  For the
first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure of
small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity.  At the end
of his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope was
really in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect to
the question, and make the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity for
voting.  I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is
begotten by circumstances--some feeling rushing warmly and making
resolve easy, while debate in cool blood had only made it more
difficult.  However it was, he did not distinctly say to himself on
which side he would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resenting
the subjection which had been forced upon him.  It would have seemed
beforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his
unmixed resolutions of independence and his select purposes, would find
himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each of
which was repugnant to him.  In his student's chambers, he had
prearranged his social action quite differently.

Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other
surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.
Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still
absent.  The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was
problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had
been generally supposed.  The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out
to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurred
in action.  Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had
foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother.  The Doctor was more than
suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this
deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is
probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the
world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still
potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas
of frilling and sentiment.  It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor
which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;
conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of
judgments connected with drugs.  At all events, it is certain that if
any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having
very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of
otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general
presumption against his medical skill.

On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr.
Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such
as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of
Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets.  If
Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine
of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr.
Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a
fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on a
particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin
for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to
fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian
Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man."  He objected to the
rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring
well-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was
generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes
spent his holidays at "the palace."

Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned, and of rounded outline,
not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas
Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the
knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed
necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and
up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing.  In short, he
had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw
it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to
circumvent it.  They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of
medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt
for each other's skill.  Regarding themselves as Middlemarch
institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and
against non-professionals given to interference.  On this ground they
were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.
Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed
from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found
that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution.  A layman who pried
into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding
his reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the two
physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by
contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as
such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,
excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate.  The
long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just
now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed
that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.
To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other
young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's
retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such
argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from
his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.
It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast
imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his
own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in
the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various
grades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of the
English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside
study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in
Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but
hardly sound.

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with
Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of
interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were
enabled to form the same judgment concerning it.

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he
entered, "I go for Farebrother.  A salary, with all my heart.  But why
take it from the Vicar?  He has none too much--has to insure his life,
besides keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities.  Put forty pounds
in his pocket and you'll do no harm.  He's a good fellow, is
Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to
carry orders."

"Ho, ho!  Doctor," said old Mr. Powderell, a retired iron-monger of
some standing--his interjection being something between a laugh and a
Parliamentary disapproval; "we must let you have your say.  But what we
have to consider is not anybody's income--it's the souls of the poor
sick people"--here Mr. Powderell's voice and face had a sincere pathos
in them.  "He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke.  I should vote
against my conscience if I voted against Mr. Tyke--I should indeed."

"Mr. Tyke's opponents have not asked any one to vote against his
conscience, I believe," said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluent
speech, whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned with
some severity towards innocent Mr. Powderell.  "But in my judgment it
behoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we will regard it as our
whole business to carry out propositions emanating from a single
quarter.  Will any member of the committee aver that he would have
entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has always
discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested
to him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution
of this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views?  I tax no
man's motives: let them lie between himself and a higher Power; but I
do say, that there are influences at work here which are incompatible
with genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usually
dictated by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves
could not afford either morally or financially to avow.  I myself am a
layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisions
in the Church and--"

"Oh, damn the divisions!" burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer and
town-clerk, who rarely presented himself at the board, but now looked
in hurriedly, whip in hand.  "We have nothing to do with them here.
Farebrother has been doing the work--what there was--without pay, and
if pay is to be given, it should be given to him.  I call it a
confounded job to take the thing away from Farebrother."

"I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a
personal bearing," said Mr. Plymdale.  "I shall vote for the
appointment of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have known, if Mr. Hackbutt
hadn't hinted it, that I was a Servile Crawler."

"I disclaim any personalities.  I expressly said, if I may be allowed
to repeat, or even to conclude what I was about to say--"

"Ah, here's Minchin!" said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turned
away from Mr. Hackbutt, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superior
gifts in Middlemarch.  "Come, Doctor, I must have you on the right
side, eh?"

"I hope so," said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and
there; "at whatever cost to my feelings."

"If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is
turned out, I think," said Mr. Frank Hawley.

"I confess I have feelings on the other side also.  I have a divided
esteem," said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his hands.  "I consider Mr. Tyke an
exemplary man--none more so--and I believe him to be proposed from
unimpeachable motives.  I, for my part, wish that I could give him my
vote.  But I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives the
preponderance to Mr. Farebrother's claims.  He is an amiable man, an
able preacher, and has been longer among us."

Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent.  Mr. Plymdale settled his
cravat, uneasily.

"You don't set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to
be, I hope," said Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier, who had just come
in.  "I have no ill-will towards him, but I think we owe something to
the public, not to speak of anything higher, in these appointments.  In
my opinion Farebrother is too lax for a clergyman.  I don't wish to
bring up particulars against him; but he will make a little attendance
here go as far as he can."

"And a devilish deal better than too much," said Mr. Hawley, whose bad
language was notorious in that part of the county.  "Sick people can't
bear so much praying and preaching.  And that methodistical sort of
religion is bad for the spirits--bad for the inside, eh?" he added,
turning quickly round to the four medical men who were assembled.

But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen,
with whom there were greetings more or less cordial.  These were the
Reverend Edward Thesiger, Rector of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and our
friend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be put
on the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended,
his attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions.  Lydgate was
the only person still expected.

Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and
self-restrained as usual.  Mr. Thesiger, a moderate evangelical, wished
for the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a zealous able man, who,
officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive
to leave him ample time for the new duty.  It was desirable that
chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent
intention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence;
and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the
more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted
into a mere question of salary.  Mr. Thesiger's manner had so much
quiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.

Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter.  He had
not himself attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had a
strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was
most happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question--"any
public question, you know," Mr. Brooke repeated, with his nod of
perfect understanding.  "I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and
in the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as
being at the disposal of the public--and, in short, my friends have
convinced me that a chaplain with a salary--a salary, you know--is a
very good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for
the appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionable
man, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind--and I am the
last man to withhold my vote--under the circumstances, you know."

"It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the
question, Mr. Brooke," said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody,
and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions.  "You don't
seem to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty
as chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposed
to supersede him."

"Excuse me, Mr. Hawley," said Mr. Bulstrode.  "Mr. Brooke has been
fully informed of Mr. Farebrother's character and position."

"By his enemies," flashed out Mr. Hawley.

"I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here," said Mr.
Thesiger.

"I'll swear there is, though," retorted Mr. Hawley.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, "the merits of the
question may be very briefly stated, and if any one present doubts that
every gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fully
informed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should weigh
on either side."

"I don't see the good of that," said Mr. Hawley.  "I suppose we all
know whom we mean to vote for.  Any man who wants to do justice does
not wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question.  I
have no time to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the vote
at once."

A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote
"Tyke" or "Farebrother" on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glass
tumbler; and in the mean time Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.

"I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present," said Mr.
Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice.  Then, looking up at Lydgate--

"There is a casting-vote still to be given.  It is yours, Mr. Lydgate:
will you be good enough to write?"

"The thing is settled now," said Mr. Wrench, rising.  "We all know how
Mr. Lydgate will vote."

"You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir," said Lydgate,
rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil suspended.

"I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode.  Do
you regard that meaning as offensive?"

"It may be offensive to others.  But I shall not desist from voting
with him on that account."  Lydgate immediately wrote down "Tyke."

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate
continued to work with Mr. Bulstrode.  He was really uncertain whether
Tyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his consciousness
told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he should
have voted for Mr. Farebrother.  The affair of the chaplaincy remained
a sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of
Middlemarch had been too strong for him.  How could a man be satisfied
with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?
No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen from
among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at
best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before.  The
character of the publican and sinner is not always practically
incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us
scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the
faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes.  But
the Vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture
of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too
much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in
this--that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and
could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

"The world has been too strong for _me_, I know," he said one day to
Lydgate.  "But then I am not a mighty man--I shall never be a man of
renown.  The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes
it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.
Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore
the Nessus shirt.  I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if
everybody else's resolve helped him."

The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a
Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities
which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.
Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr.
Farebrother.

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

completion: Lydgate is compelled to vote for Farebrother, at the expense of any help from Bulstrode; he debates this with himself, and the outcomes of either decision. Lydgate wants to secure Farebrother the much needed money, but also wants to keep in Bulstrode's good graces, and knows that Tyke might be better suited to the position. The voting meeting begins, with Lydgate still waffling; people have their various reasons for voting for Farebrother or for Lydgate, and they all vary widely. Lydgate finally decides upon Mr. Tyke.


prompt:
Chapter: "L' altra vedete ch'ha fatto alla guancia
     Della sua palma, sospirando, letto."
                              --Purgatorio, vii.

When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of
Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy
was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born
Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome.  In those days
the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years
than it is at present.  Travellers did not often carry full information
on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the
most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the flower-flushed
tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's
fancy.  Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with
love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven
and entered into everybody's food; it was fermenting still as a
distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired German
artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who worked or idled
near them were sometimes caught in the spreading movement.

One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long, but
abundant and curly, and who was otherwise English in his equipment, had
just turned his back on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was
looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from the adjoining
round vestibule.  He was sufficiently absorbed not to notice the
approach of a dark-eyed, animated German who came up to him and placing
a hand on his shoulder, said with a strong accent, "Come here, quick!
else she will have changed her pose."

Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures passed lightly
along by the Meleager, towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne,
then called the Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness of her
beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like ease and
tenderness.  They were just in time to see another figure standing
against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming
girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish gray
drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from
her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing
somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to
her face around the simply braided dark-brown hair.  She was not
looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes
were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the
floor.  But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly
paused as if to contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at
them, immediately turned away to join a maid-servant and courier who
were loitering along the hall at a little distance off.

"What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis?" said the
German, searching in his friend's face for responding admiration, but
going on volubly without waiting for any other answer.  "There lies
antique beauty, not corpse-like even in death, but arrested in the
complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty
in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in
its bosom.  But she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks
almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my
picture.  However, she is married; I saw her wedding-ring on that
wonderful left hand, otherwise I should have thought the sallow
Geistlicher was her father.  I saw him parting from her a good while
ago, and just now I found her in that magnificent pose.  Only think! he
is perhaps rich, and would like to have her portrait taken.  Ah! it is
no use looking after her--there she goes!  Let us follow her home!"

"No, no," said his companion, with a little frown.

"You are singular, Ladislaw.  You look struck together.  Do you know
her?"

"I know that she is married to my cousin," said Will Ladislaw,
sauntering down the hall with a preoccupied air, while his German
friend kept at his side and watched him eagerly.

"What! the Geistlicher? He looks more like an uncle--a more useful sort
of relation."

"He is not my uncle.  I tell you he is my second cousin," said
Ladislaw, with some irritation.

"Schon, schon.  Don't be snappish.  You are not angry with me for
thinking Mrs. Second-Cousin the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw?"

"Angry? nonsense.  I have only seen her once before, for a couple of
minutes, when my cousin introduced her to me, just before I left
England.  They were not married then.  I didn't know they were coming
to Rome."

"But you will go to see them now--you will find out what they have for
an address--since you know the name.  Shall we go to the post?  And you
could speak about the portrait."

"Confound you, Naumann!  I don't know what I shall do.  I am not so
brazen as you."

"Bah! that is because you are dilettantish and amateurish.  If you were
an artist, you would think of Mistress Second-Cousin as antique form
animated by Christian sentiment--a sort of Christian Antigone--sensuous
force controlled by spiritual passion."

"Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her
existence--the divinity passing into higher completeness and all but
exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas.  I am amateurish
if you like: I do _not_ think that all the universe is straining
towards the obscure significance of your pictures."

"But it is, my dear!--so far as it is straining through me, Adolf
Naumann: that stands firm," said the good-natured painter, putting a
hand on Ladislaw's shoulder, and not in the least disturbed by the
unaccountable touch of ill-humor in his tone.  "See now!  My existence
presupposes the existence of the whole universe--does it _not?_ and my
function is to paint--and as a painter I have a conception which is
altogether genialisch, of your great-aunt or second grandmother as a
subject for a picture; therefore, the universe is straining towards
that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth
in the shape of me--not true?"

"But how if another claw in the shape of me is straining to thwart
it?--the case is a little less simple then."

"Not at all: the result of the struggle is the same thing--picture or
no picture--logically."

Will could not resist this imperturbable temper, and the cloud in his
face broke into sunshiny laughter.

"Come now, my friend--you will help?" said Naumann, in a hopeful tone.

"No; nonsense, Naumann!  English ladies are not at everybody's service
as models.  And you want to express too much with your painting.  You
would only have made a better or worse portrait with a background which
every connoisseur would give a different reason for or against.  And
what is a portrait of a woman?  Your painting and Plastik are poor
stuff after all.  They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising
them.  Language is a finer medium."

"Yes, for those who can't paint," said Naumann.  "There you have
perfect right.  I did not recommend you to paint, my friend."

The amiable artist carried his sting, but Ladislaw did not choose to
appear stung.  He went on as if he had not heard.

"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings
vague.  After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at
you with an insistent imperfection.  I feel that especially about
representations of women.  As if a woman were a mere colored
superficies!  You must wait for movement and tone.  There is a
difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to
moment.--This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you
paint her voice, pray?  But her voice is much diviner than anything you
have seen of her."

"I see, I see.  You are jealous.  No man must presume to think that he
can paint your ideal.  This is serious, my friend!  Your great-aunt!
'Der Neffe als Onkel' in a tragic sense--ungeheuer!"

"You and I shall quarrel, Naumann, if you call that lady my aunt again."

"How is she to be called then?"

"Mrs. Casaubon."

"Good.  Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you, and find
that she very much wishes to be painted?"

"Yes, suppose!" said Will Ladislaw, in a contemptuous undertone,
intended to dismiss the subject.  He was conscious of being irritated
by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation.  Why
was he making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon?  And yet he felt as if
something had happened to him with regard to her.  There are characters
which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in
dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them.  Their
susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently
quiet.

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

completion: Dorothea is at last in Rome on her honeymoon, and Will Ladislaw is there too, spotting her but not daring to approach. Will's friend, Naumann, is there too, is taken with her beauty and wants to paint her picture; Will is still under the influence of his negative first impression of her, and does not want to see her at the risk of finding her as unpleasant as he suspects.