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."



    "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.

 In a character sketch of Mr. Farebrother, we see why he is best suited for the hospital job. He is a kindly bachelor of forty who supports his mother, aunt, and sister. He is modest and does not try to influence Lydgate who is becoming his personal friend. They enjoy speaking of scientific topics, for Farebrother is a naturalist and shows his collection of insects to Lydgate. Lydgate tells Farebrother he hopes to accomplish more in Middlemarch than in London, because he can avoid entanglements in a small town and stick to his work. Farebrother hints that a wife can help a man avoid entanglements, if she is a girl like Mary Garth, whom he personally favors. Tyke, Farebrother's rival for the hospital job, is not as kind to his parishioners and preaches tiresome dogma. Bulstrode supports Tyke because his doctrine is severe and closer to his own. Lydgate is pressured into voting for Mr. Tyke at the meeting of the medical board. Lydgate prefers his friend, Farebrother, who needs the money, but he disapproves of Farebrother's tendency to play cards for money. On the other hand, he has to vote Bulstrode's way to get financial support for his own work. He casts the tiebreaking vote for Tyke.

