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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is that astonishing, Celia?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is that youngster, Casaubon?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



    "He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes
     to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed."--FULLER.


Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited
him, and only six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned that his young
relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness
to waive inquiry.  Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise
destination than the entire area of Europe.  Genius, he held, is
necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the
utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await
those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work,
only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime
chances.  The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had
sincerely tried many of them.  He was not excessively fond of wine, but
he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that
form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on
lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium.  Nothing greatly
original had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium
had convinced him that there was an entire dissimilarity between his
constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded circumstance which would
evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned.
Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment.  We
know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes
may be disguised in helpless embryos.--In fact, the world is full of
hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.  Will
saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing
no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose
plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned
theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a
moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the
intentions of the universe with regard to himself.  He held that
reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the
contrary; genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility,
but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in
particular.  Let him start for the Continent, then, without our
pronouncing on his future.  Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the
most gratuitous.

But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me
more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin.  If to
Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight
the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow
that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned
personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him?
I protest against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived from
Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring clergyman's alleged
greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's
legs,--from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from
Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance.  I am
not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary
superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of
himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his
portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin.
Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling
rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or
fine feeling in him.  Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of
hieroglyphs write detestable verses?  Has the theory of the solar
system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?
Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener
interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings
or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors;
what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the years
are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against
universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring
his heart to its final pause.  Doubtless his lot is important in his
own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place
in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer
him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held
sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he
may have got from us.  Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own
world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made
for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness
for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite
alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims
some of our pity.

Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more
nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their
disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more
tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the
disappointment of the amiable Sir James.  For in truth, as the day
fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his
spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden
scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered
with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him than the
accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand.  He did not confess to
himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise
that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won
delight,--which he had also regarded as an object to be found by
search.  It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying
the contrary; but knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of
motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their
personal application.

Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had
stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that large
drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we all of
us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act
fatally on the strength of them.  And now he was in danger of being
saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually
happy: there was nothing external by which he could account for a
certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when his
expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged
the accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the
Grange.  Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly
condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened
him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to
the goal.  And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from
sympathy.  He could not but wish that Dorothea should think him not
less happy than the world would expect her successful suitor to be; and
in relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and
veneration, he liked to draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as
a means of encouragement to himself: in talking to her he presented all
his performance and intention with the reflected confidence of the
pedagogue, and rid himself for the time of that chilling ideal audience
which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous pressure
of Tartarean shades.

For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted to
young ladies which had made the chief part of her education, Mr.
Casaubon's talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and this
sense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics
and Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own,
kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory
which could bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with
that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge some
bearing on her actions.  That more complete teaching would come--Mr.
Casaubon would tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher
initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage, and
blending her dim conceptions of both.  It would be a great mistake to
suppose that Dorothea would have cared about any share in Mr.
Casaubon's learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the
neighborhood of Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that
epithet would not have described her to circles in whose more precise
vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing,
apart from character.  All her eagerness for acquirement lay within
that full current of sympathetic motive in which her ideas and impulses
were habitually swept along.  She did not want to deck herself with
knowledge--to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her
action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint
Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her
conscience.  But something she yearned for by which her life might be
filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was
gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer
heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but
knowledge?  Surely learned men kept the only oil; and who more learned
than Mr. Casaubon?

Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation was
unbroken, and however her lover might occasionally be conscious of
flatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionate
interest.

The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the
wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this
because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican.

"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said one
morning, some time after it had been ascertained that Celia objected to
go, and that Dorothea did not wish for her companionship.  "You will
have many lonely hours, Dorothea, for I shall be constrained to make
the utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel
more at liberty if you had a companion."

The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea.  For the
first time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance.

"You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I
should not enter into the value of your time--if you think that I
should not willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to
the best purpose."

"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, not
in the least noticing that she was hurt; "but if you had a lady as your
companion, I could put you both under the care of a cicerone, and we
could thus achieve two purposes in the same space of time."

"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, rather
haughtily.  But immediately she feared that she was wrong, and turning
towards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a different tone, "Pray
do not be anxious about me.  I shall have so much to think of when I am
alone.  And Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care
of me.  I could not bear to have Celia: she would be miserable."

It was time to dress.  There was to be a dinner-party that day, the
last of the parties which were held at the Grange as proper
preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea was glad of a reason for
moving away at once on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more
than her usual amount of preparation.  She was ashamed of being
irritated from some cause she could not define even to herself; for
though she had no intention to be untruthful, her reply had not touched
the real hurt within her.  Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite
reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous sense of
aloofness on his part.

"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said to
herself.  "How can I have a husband who is so much above me without
knowing that he needs me less than I need him?"

Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she
recovered her equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serene dignity
when she came into the drawing-room in her silver-gray dress--the
simple lines of her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiled
massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her manner
and expression of all search after mere effect.  Sometimes when
Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of
repose about her as if she had been a picture of Santa Barbara looking
out from her tower into the clear air; but these intervals of quietude
made the energy of her speech and emotion the more remarked when some
outward appeal had touched her.

She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for
the dinner-party was large and rather more miscellaneous as to the male
portion than any which had been held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's
nieces had resided with him, so that the talking was done in duos and
trios more or less inharmonious.  There was the newly elected mayor of
Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic
banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town that
some called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to the
resources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men.
In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the
Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner,
who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their
grandfathers' furniture.  For in that part of the country, before
reform had done its notable part in developing the political
consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer
distinction of parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations
seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his inordinate
travel and habit of taking too much in the form of ideas.

Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room, opportunity was
found for some interjectional "asides."

"A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by God!" said Mr.
Standish, the old lawyer, who had been so long concerned with the
landed gentry that he had become landed himself, and used that oath in
a deep-mouthed manner as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the
speech of a man who held a good position.

Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but that gentleman
disliked coarseness and profanity, and merely bowed.  The remark was
taken up by Mr. Chichely, a middle-aged bachelor and coursing
celebrity, who had a complexion something like an Easter egg, a few
hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage implying the consciousness of
a distinguished appearance.

"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a
little more to please us.  There should be a little filigree about a
woman--something of the coquette.  A man likes a sort of challenge.
The more of a dead set she makes at you the better."

"There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial.
"And, by God, it's usually the way with them.  I suppose it answers
some wise ends: Providence made them so, eh, Bulstrode?"

"I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source," said Mr.
Bulstrode.  "I should rather refer it to the devil."

"Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr.
Chichely, whose study of the fair sex seemed to have been detrimental
to his theology.  "And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a
swan neck.  Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste
than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either.  If I were a marrying man I
should choose Miss Vincy before either of them."

"Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the
middle-aged fellows early the day."

Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to
incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.

The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of
course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far,
would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a
Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion.  The
feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs.
Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was
not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on
the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed
clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need
the supplement of quackery.  Lady Chettam, who attributed her own
remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical
attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs.
Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her
case of all strengthening medicines.

"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the
mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively,
when Mrs. Renfrew's attention was called away.

"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too
well-born not to be an amateur in medicine.  "Everything depends on the
constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile--that's
my view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the
mill."

"Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce--reduce the
disease, you know, if you are right, my dear.  And I think what you say
is reasonable."

"Certainly it is reasonable.  You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on
the same soil.  One of them grows more and more watery--"

"Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew--that is what I think.  Dropsy!  There
is no swelling yet--it is inward.  I should say she ought to take
drying medicines, shouldn't you?--or a dry hot-air bath.  Many things
might be tried, of a drying nature."

"Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an
undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter.  "He does not want drying."

"Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to
nullify the pleasure of explanation.

"The bridegroom--Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since
the engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose."

"I should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady
Chettam, with a still deeper undertone.  "And then his studies--so very
dry, as you say."

"Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned
over for the occasion.  Mark my words: in a year from this time that
girl will hate him.  She looks up to him as an oracle now, and
by-and-by she will be at the other extreme.  All flightiness!"

"How very shocking!  I fear she is headstrong.  But tell me--you know
all about him--is there anything very bad?  What is the truth?"

"The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic--nasty to take, and sure
to disagree."

"There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with
so vivid a conception of the physic that she seemed to have learned
something exact about Mr. Casaubon's disadvantages.  "However, James
will hear nothing against Miss Brooke.  He says she is the mirror of
women still."

"That is a generous make-believe of his.  Depend upon it, he likes
little Celia better, and she appreciates him.  I hope you like my
little Celia?"

"Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though
not so fine a figure.  But we were talking of physic.  Tell me about
this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate.  I am told he is wonderfully
clever: he certainly looks it--a fine brow indeed."

"He is a gentleman.  I heard him talking to Humphrey.  He talks well."

"Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland,
really well connected.  One does not expect it in a practitioner of
that kind.  For my own part, I like a medical man more on a footing
with the servants; they are often all the cleverer.  I assure you I
found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong.  He was
coarse and butcher-like, but he knew my constitution.  It was a loss to
me his going off so suddenly.  Dear me, what a very animated
conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with this Mr. Lydgate!"

"She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, whose ears and power of interpretation were quick.  "I
believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so Brooke is sure to take him
up."

"James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "bring Mr. Lydgate
and introduce him to me.  I want to test him."

The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of
making Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance, having heard of his success in
treating fever on a new plan.

Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave
whatever nonsense was talked to him, and his dark steady eyes gave him
impressiveness as a listener.  He was as little as possible like the
lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless refinement about his
toilet and utterance.  Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in
him.  He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar,
by admitting that all constitutions might be called peculiar, and he
did not deny that hers might be more peculiar than others.  He did not
approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor, on
the other hand, of incessant port wine and bark.  He said "I think so"
with an air of so much deference accompanying the insight of agreement,
that she formed the most cordial opinion of his talents.

"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before
going away.

"My protege?--dear me!--who is that?" said Mr. Brooke.

"This young Lydgate, the new doctor. He seems to me to understand his
profession admirably."

"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of
his who sent me a letter about him.  However, I think he is likely to
be first-rate--has studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you
know--wants to raise the profession."

"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that
sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke, after he had handed out Lady
Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers.

"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound?--upsetting The old
treatment, which has made Englishmen what they are?" said Mr. Standish.

"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who
spoke in a subdued tone, and had rather a sickly air.  "I, for my part,
hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate.  I hope to find good reason for
confiding the new hospital to his management."

"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr.
Bulstrode; "if you like him to try experiments on your hospital
patients, and kill a few people for charity I have no objection.  But I
am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on
me.  I like treatment that has been tested a little."

"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment-an
experiment, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.

"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much
disgust at such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a
valuable client.

"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing
me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger," said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a
florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh in striking
contrast with the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode.  "It's an
uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the
shafts of disease, as somebody said,--and I think it a very good
expression myself."

Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing.  He had quitted the party
early, and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty
of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke,
whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded
scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the
piquancy of an unusual combination.

"She is a good creature--that fine girl--but a little too earnest," he
thought.  "It is troublesome to talk to such women.  They are always
wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of
any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle
things after their own taste."

Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more
than Mr. Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter,
whose mind was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to
shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young
women to purplefaced bachelors.  But Lydgate was less ripe, and might
possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as
to the most excellent things in woman.

Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen
under her maiden name.  Not long after that dinner-party she had become
Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome.



    "But deeds and language such as men do use,
     And persons such as comedy would choose,
     When she would show an image of the times,
     And sport with human follies, not with crimes."
                                       --BEN JONSON.


Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman
strikingly different from Miss Brooke: he did not in the least suppose
that he had lost his balance and fallen in love, but he had said of
that particular woman, "She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely
and accomplished.  That is what a woman ought to be: she ought to
produce the effect of exquisite music." Plain women he regarded as he
did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and
investigated by science.  But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have the true
melodic charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would have
chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor
will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.  Lydgate
believed that he should not marry for several years: not marry until he
had trodden out a good clear path for himself away from the broad road
which was quite ready made.  He had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon
almost as long as it had taken Mr. Casaubon to become engaged and
married: but this learned gentleman was possessed of a fortune; he had
assembled his voluminous notes, and had made that sort of reputation
which precedes performance,--often the larger part of a man's fame.  He
took a wife, as we have seen, to adorn the remaining quadrant of his
course, and be a little moon that would cause hardly a calculable
perturbation.  But Lydgate was young, poor, ambitious.  He had his
half-century before him instead of behind him, and he had come to
Middlemarch bent on doing many things that were not directly fitted to
make his fortune or even secure him a good income.  To a man under such
circumstances, taking a wife is something more than a question of
adornment, however highly he may rate this; and Lydgate was disposed to
give it the first place among wifely functions.  To his taste, guided
by a single conversation, here was the point on which Miss Brooke would
be found wanting, notwithstanding her undeniable beauty.  She did not
look at things from the proper feminine angle.  The society of such
women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach the second
form, instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for
bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven.

Certainly nothing at present could seem much less important to Lydgate
than the turn of Miss Brooke's mind, or to Miss Brooke than the
qualities of the woman who had attracted this young surgeon.  But any
one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow
preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a
calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we
look at our unintroduced neighbor.  Destiny stands by sarcastic with
our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not
only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies
who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their
establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are
constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting
new consciousness of interdependence.  Some slipped a little downward,
some got higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and
fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in political
currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves
surprisingly grouped in consequence; while a few personages or families
that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation, were slowly
presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the
double change of self and beholder.  Municipal town and rural parish
gradually made fresh threads of connection--gradually, as the old
stocking gave way to the savings-bank, and the worship of the solar
guinea became extinct; while squires and baronets, and even lords who
had once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind, gathered the
faultiness of closer acquaintanceship.  Settlers, too, came from
distant counties, some with an alarming novelty of skill, others with
an offensive advantage in cunning.  In fact, much the same sort of
movement and mixture went on in old England as we find in older
Herodotus, who also, in telling what had been, thought it well to take
a woman's lot for his starting-point; though Io, as a maiden apparently
beguiled by attractive merchandise, was the reverse of Miss Brooke, and
in this respect perhaps bore more resemblance to Rosamond Vincy, who
had excellent taste in costume, with that nymph-like figure and pure
blindness which give the largest range to choice in the flow and color
of drapery.  But these things made only part of her charm.  She was
admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in
the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the
accomplished female--even to extras, such as the getting in and out of
a carriage.  Mrs. Lemon herself had always held up Miss Vincy as an
example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady for mental
acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was
quite exceptional.  We cannot help the way in which people speak of us,
and probably if Mrs. Lemon had undertaken to describe Juliet or Imogen,
these heroines would not have seemed poetical.  The first vision of
Rosamond would have been enough with most judges to dispel any
prejudice excited by Mrs. Lemon's praise.

Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable
vision, or even without making the acquaintance of the Vincy family;
for though Mr. Peacock, whose practice he had paid something to enter
on, had not been their doctor (Mrs. Vincy not liking the lowering
system adopted by him), he had many patients among their connections
and acquaintances.  For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not
connected or at least acquainted with the Vincys?  They were old
manufacturers, and had kept a good house for three generations, in
which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbors more
or less decidedly genteel.  Mr. Vincy's sister had made a wealthy match
in accepting Mr. Bulstrode, who, however, as a man not born in the
town, and altogether of dimly known origin, was considered to have done
well in uniting himself with a real Middlemarch family; on the other
hand, Mr. Vincy had descended a little, having taken an innkeeper's
daughter.  But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money;
for Mrs. Vincy's sister had been second wife to rich old Mr.
Featherstone, and had died childless years ago, so that her nephews and
nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower.  And
it happened that Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Featherstone, two of Peacock's
most important patients, had, from different causes, given an
especially good reception to his successor, who had raised some
partisanship as well as discussion.  Mr. Wrench, medical attendant to
the Vincy family, very early had grounds for thinking lightly of
Lydgate's professional discretion, and there was no report about him
which was not retailed at the Vincys', where visitors were frequent.
Mr. Vincy was more inclined to general good-fellowship than to taking
sides, but there was no need for him to be hasty in making any new man
acquaintance.  Rosamond silently wished that her father would invite
Mr. Lydgate.  She was tired of the faces and figures she had always
been used to--the various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of
phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had known as
boys.  She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose
brothers, she felt sure, it would have been possible for her to be more
interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions.  But
she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father; and he,
for his part, was in no hurry on the subject.  An alderman about to be
mayor must by-and-by enlarge his dinner-parties, but at present there
were plenty of guests at his well-spread table.

That table often remained covered with the relics of the family
breakfast long after Mr. Vincy had gone with his second son to the
warehouse, and when Miss Morgan was already far on in morning lessons
with the younger girls in the schoolroom.  It awaited the family
laggard, who found any sort of inconvenience (to others) less
disagreeable than getting up when he was called.  This was the case one
morning of the October in which we have lately seen Mr. Casaubon
visiting the Grange; and though the room was a little overheated with
the fire, which had sent the spaniel panting to a remote corner,
Rosamond, for some reason, continued to sit at her embroidery longer
than usual, now and then giving herself a little shake, and laying her
work on her knee to contemplate it with an air of hesitating weariness.
Her mamma, who had returned from an excursion to the kitchen, sat on
the other side of the small work-table with an air of more entire
placidity, until, the clock again giving notice that it was going to
strike, she looked up from the lace-mending which was occupying her
plump fingers and rang the bell.

"Knock at Mr. Fred's door again, Pritchard, and tell him it has struck
half-past ten."

This was said without any change in the radiant good-humor of Mrs.
Vincy's face, in which forty-five years had delved neither angles nor
parallels; and pushing back her pink capstrings, she let her work rest
on her lap, while she looked admiringly at her daughter.

"Mamma," said Rosamond, "when Fred comes down I wish you would not let
him have red herrings.  I cannot bear the smell of them all over the
house at this hour of the morning."

"Oh, my dear, you are so hard on your brothers!  It is the only fault I
have to find with you.  You are the sweetest temper in the world, but
you are so tetchy with your brothers."

"Not tetchy, mamma: you never hear me speak in an unladylike way."

"Well, but you want to deny them things."

"Brothers are so unpleasant."

"Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men.  Be thankful if they have
good hearts.  A woman must learn to put up with little things.  You
will be married some day."

"Not to any one who is like Fred."

"Don't decry your own brother, my dear.  Few young men have less
against them, although he couldn't take his degree--I'm sure I can't
understand why, for he seems to me most clever.  And you know yourself
he was thought equal to the best society at college.  So particular as
you are, my dear, I wonder you are not glad to have such a gentlemanly
young man for a brother.  You are always finding fault with Bob because
he is not Fred."

"Oh no, mamma, only because he is Bob."

"Well, my dear, you will not find any Middlemarch young man who has not
something against him."

"But"--here Rosamond's face broke into a smile which suddenly revealed
two dimples.  She herself thought unfavorably of these dimples and
smiled little in general society.  "But I shall not marry any
Middlemarch young man."

"So it seems, my love, for you have as good as refused the pick of
them; and if there's better to be had, I'm sure there's no girl better
deserves it."

"Excuse me, mamma--I wish you would not say, 'the pick of them.'"

"Why, what else are they?"

"I mean, mamma, it is rather a vulgar expression."

"Very likely, my dear; I never was a good speaker.  What should I say?"

"The best of them."

"Why, that seems just as plain and common.  If I had had time to think,
I should have said, 'the most superior young men.' But with your
education you must know."

"What must Rosy know, mother?" said Mr. Fred, who had slid in
unobserved through the half-open door while the ladies were bending
over their work, and now going up to the fire stood with his back
towards it, warming the soles of his slippers.

"Whether it's right to say 'superior young men,'" said Mrs. Vincy,
ringing the bell.

"Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now.  Superior is
getting to be shopkeepers' slang."

"Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond, with mild
gravity.

"Only the wrong sort.  All choice of words is slang.  It marks a class."

"There is correct English: that is not slang."

"I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write
history and essays.  And the strongest slang of all is the slang of
poets."

"You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point."

"Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a
leg-plaiter."

"Of course you can call it poetry if you like."

"Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang.  I shall invent a new
game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to
you to separate."

"Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!" said Mrs.
Vincy, with cheerful admiration.

"Have you got nothing else for my breakfast, Pritchard?" said Fred, to
the servant who brought in coffee and buttered toast; while he walked
round the table surveying the ham, potted beef, and other cold
remnants, with an air of silent rejection, and polite forbearance from
signs of disgust.

"Should you like eggs, sir?"

"Eggs, no!  Bring me a grilled bone."

"Really, Fred," said Rosamond, when the servant had left the room, "if
you must have hot things for breakfast, I wish you would come down
earlier.  You can get up at six o'clock to go out hunting; I cannot
understand why you find it so difficult to get up on other mornings."

"That is your want of understanding, Rosy.  I can get up to go hunting
because I like it."

"What would you think of me if I came down two hours after every one
else and ordered grilled bone?"

"I should think you were an uncommonly fast young lady," said Fred,
eating his toast with the utmost composure.

"I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any
more than sisters."

"I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so.
Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions."

"I think it describes the smell of grilled bone."

"Not at all.  It describes a sensation in your little nose associated
with certain finicking notions which are the classics of Mrs. Lemon's
school.  Look at my mother; you don't see her objecting to everything
except what she does herself.  She is my notion of a pleasant woman."

"Bless you both, my dears, and don't quarrel," said Mrs. Vincy, with
motherly cordiality.  "Come, Fred, tell us all about the new doctor.
How is your uncle pleased with him?"

"Pretty well, I think.  He asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then
screws up his face while he hears the answers, as if they were pinching
his toes.  That's his way.  Ah, here comes my grilled bone."

"But how came you to stay out so late, my dear?  You only said you were
going to your uncle's."

"Oh, I dined at Plymdale's. We had whist.  Lydgate was there too."

"And what do you think of him?  He is very gentlemanly, I suppose.
They say he is of excellent family--his relations quite county people."

"Yes," said Fred.  "There was a Lydgate at John's who spent no end of
money.  I find this man is a second cousin of his.  But rich men may
have very poor devils for second cousins."

"It always makes a difference, though, to be of good family," said
Rosamond, with a tone of decision which showed that she had thought on
this subject.  Rosamond felt that she might have been happier if she
had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer.  She disliked
anything which reminded her that her mother's father had been an
innkeeper.  Certainly any one remembering the fact might think that
Mrs. Vincy had the air of a very handsome good-humored landlady,
accustomed to the most capricious orders of gentlemen.

"I thought it was odd his name was Tertius," said the bright-faced
matron, "but of course it's a name in the family.  But now, tell us
exactly what sort of man he is."

"Oh, tallish, dark, clever--talks well--rather a prig, I think."

"I never can make out what you mean by a prig," said Rosamond.

"A fellow who wants to show that he has opinions."

"Why, my dear, doctors must have opinions," said Mrs. Vincy.  "What are
they there for else?"

"Yes, mother, the opinions they are paid for.  But a prig is a fellow
who is always making you a present of his opinions."

"I suppose Mary Garth admires Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, not without
a touch of innuendo.

"Really, I can't say." said Fred, rather glumly, as he left the table,
and taking up a novel which he had brought down with him, threw himself
into an arm-chair. "If you are jealous of her, go oftener to Stone
Court yourself and eclipse her."

"I wish you would not be so vulgar, Fred.  If you have finished, pray
ring the bell."

"It is true, though--what your brother says, Rosamond," Mrs. Vincy
began, when the servant had cleared the table.  "It is a thousand
pities you haven't patience to go and see your uncle more, so proud of
you as he is, and wanted you to live with him.  There's no knowing what
he might have done for you as well as for Fred.  God knows, I'm fond of
having you at home with me, but I can part with my children for their
good.  And now it stands to reason that your uncle Featherstone will do
something for Mary Garth."

"Mary Garth can bear being at Stone Court, because she likes that
better than being a governess," said Rosamond, folding up her work.  "I
would rather not have anything left to me if I must earn it by enduring
much of my uncle's cough and his ugly relations."

"He can't be long for this world, my dear; I wouldn't hasten his end,
but what with asthma and that inward complaint, let us hope there is
something better for him in another.  And I have no ill-will toward's
Mary Garth, but there's justice to be thought of.  And Mr.
Featherstone's first wife brought him no money, as my sister did.  Her
nieces and nephews can't have so much claim as my sister's.  And I must
say I think Mary Garth a dreadful plain girl--more fit for a governess."

"Every one would not agree with you there, mother," said Fred, who
seemed to be able to read and listen too.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, wheeling skilfully, "if she _had_
some fortune left her,--a man marries his wife's relations, and the
Garths are so poor, and live in such a small way.  But I shall leave
you to your studies, my dear; for I must go and do some shopping."

"Fred's studies are not very deep," said Rosamond, rising with her
mamma, "he is only reading a novel."

"Well, well, by-and-by he'll go to his Latin and things," said Mrs.
Vincy, soothingly, stroking her son's head.  "There's a fire in the
smoking-room on purpose.  It's your father's wish, you know--Fred, my
dear--and I always tell him you will be good, and go to college again
to take your degree."

Fred drew his mother's hand down to his lips, but said nothing.

"I suppose you are not going out riding to-day?" said Rosamond,
lingering a little after her mamma was gone.

"No; why?"

"Papa says I may have the chestnut to ride now."

"You can go with me to-morrow, if you like.  Only I am going to Stone
Court, remember."

"I want to ride so much, it is indifferent to me where we go." Rosamond
really wished to go to Stone Court, of all other places.

"Oh, I say, Rosy," said Fred, as she was passing out of the room, "if
you are going to the piano, let me come and play some airs with you."

"Pray do not ask me this morning."

"Why not this morning?"

"Really, Fred, I wish you would leave off playing the flute.  A man
looks very silly playing the flute.  And you play so out of tune."

"When next any one makes love to you, Miss Rosamond, I will tell him
how obliging you are."

"Why should you expect me to oblige you by hearing you play the flute,
any more than I should expect you to oblige me by not playing it?"

"And why should you expect me to take you out riding?"

This question led to an adjustment, for Rosamond had set her mind on
that particular ride.

So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour's practice of "Ar hyd y nos,"
"Ye banks and braes," and other favorite airs from his "Instructor on
the Flute;" a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition and
an irrepressible hopefulness.



    "He had more tow on his distaffe
     Than Gerveis knew."
                           --CHAUCER.


The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning,
lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and
pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty and to
spread out coral fruit for the birds.  Little details gave each field a
particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from
childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees
leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in
mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope
of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the
huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of
approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering
wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and
valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel
far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful.
These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to
midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps learned
by heart standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely.

But the road, even the byroad, was excellent; for Lowick, as we have
seen, was not a parish of muddy lanes and poor tenants; and it was into
Lowick parish that Fred and Rosamond entered after a couple of miles'
riding.  Another mile would bring them to Stone Court, and at the end
of the first half, the house was already visible, looking as if it had
been arrested in its growth toward a stone mansion by an unexpected
budding of farm-buildings on its left flank, which had hindered it from
becoming anything more than the substantial dwelling of a gentleman
farmer.  It was not the less agreeable an object in the distance for
the cluster of pinnacled corn-ricks which balanced the fine row of
walnuts on the right.

Presently it was possible to discern something that might be a gig on
the circular drive before the front door.

"Dear me," said Rosamond, "I hope none of my uncle's horrible relations
are there."

"They are, though.  That is Mrs. Waule's gig--the last yellow gig left,
I should think.  When I see Mrs. Waule in it, I understand how yellow
can have been worn for mourning.  That gig seems to me more funereal
than a hearse.  But then Mrs. Waule always has black crape on.  How
does she manage it, Rosy?  Her friends can't always be dying."

"I don't know at all.  And she is not in the least evangelical," said
Rosamond, reflectively, as if that religious point of view would have
fully accounted for perpetual crape.  "And, not poor," she added, after
a moment's pause.

"No, by George!  They are as rich as Jews, those Waules and
Featherstones; I mean, for people like them, who don't want to spend
anything.  And yet they hang about my uncle like vultures, and are
afraid of a farthing going away from their side of the family.  But I
believe he hates them all."

The Mrs. Waule who was so far from being admirable in the eyes of these
distant connections, had happened to say this very morning (not at all
with a defiant air, but in a low, muffled, neutral tone, as of a voice
heard through cotton wool) that she did not wish "to enjoy their good
opinion." She was seated, as she observed, on her own brother's hearth,
and had been Jane Featherstone five-and-twenty years before she had
been Jane Waule, which entitled her to speak when her own brother's
name had been made free with by those who had no right to it.

"What are you driving at there?" said Mr. Featherstone, holding his
stick between his knees and settling his wig, while he gave her a
momentary sharp glance, which seemed to react on him like a draught of
cold air and set him coughing.

Mrs. Waule had to defer her answer till he was quiet again, till Mary
Garth had supplied him with fresh syrup, and he had begun to rub the
gold knob of his stick, looking bitterly at the fire.  It was a bright
fire, but it made no difference to the chill-looking purplish tint of
Mrs. Waule's face, which was as neutral as her voice; having mere
chinks for eyes, and lips that hardly moved in speaking.

"The doctors can't master that cough, brother.  It's just like what I
have; for I'm your own sister, constitution and everything.  But, as I
was saying, it's a pity Mrs. Vincy's family can't be better conducted."

"Tchah! you said nothing o' the sort.  You said somebody had made free
with my name."

"And no more than can be proved, if what everybody says is true.  My
brother Solomon tells me it's the talk up and down in Middlemarch how
unsteady young Vincy is, and has been forever gambling at billiards
since home he came."

"Nonsense!  What's a game at billiards?  It's a good gentlemanly game;
and young Vincy is not a clodhopper.  If your son John took to
billiards, now, he'd make a fool of himself."

"Your nephew John never took to billiards or any other game, brother,
and is far from losing hundreds of pounds, which, if what everybody
says is true, must be found somewhere else than out of Mr. Vincy the
father's pocket.  For they say he's been losing money for years, though
nobody would think so, to see him go coursing and keeping open house as
they do.  And I've heard say Mr. Bulstrode condemns Mrs. Vincy beyond
anything for her flightiness, and spoiling her children so."

"What's Bulstrode to me?  I don't bank with him."

"Well, Mrs. Bulstrode is Mr. Vincy's own sister, and they do say that
Mr. Vincy mostly trades on the Bank money; and you may see yourself,
brother, when a woman past forty has pink strings always flying, and
that light way of laughing at everything, it's very unbecoming.  But
indulging your children is one thing, and finding money to pay their
debts is another.  And it's openly said that young Vincy has raised
money on his expectations.  I don't say what expectations.  Miss Garth
hears me, and is welcome to tell again.  I know young people hang
together."

"No, thank you, Mrs. Waule," said Mary Garth.  "I dislike hearing
scandal too much to wish to repeat it."

Mr. Featherstone rubbed the knob of his stick and made a brief
convulsive show of laughter, which had much the same genuineness as an
old whist-player's chuckle over a bad hand.  Still looking at the fire,
he said--

"And who pretends to say Fred Vincy hasn't got expectations?  Such a
fine, spirited fellow is like enough to have 'em."

There was a slight pause before Mrs. Waule replied, and when she did
so, her voice seemed to be slightly moistened with tears, though her
face was still dry.

"Whether or no, brother, it is naturally painful to me and my brother
Solomon to hear your name made free with, and your complaint being such
as may carry you off sudden, and people who are no more Featherstones
than the Merry-Andrew at the fair, openly reckoning on your property
coming to _them_.  And me your own sister, and Solomon your own
brother!  And if that's to be it, what has it pleased the Almighty to
make families for?" Here Mrs. Waule's tears fell, but with moderation.

"Come, out with it, Jane!" said Mr. Featherstone, looking at her.  "You
mean to say, Fred Vincy has been getting somebody to advance him money
on what he says he knows about my will, eh?"

"I never said so, brother" (Mrs. Waule's voice had again become dry and
unshaken). "It was told me by my brother Solomon last night when he
called coming from market to give me advice about the old wheat, me
being a widow, and my son John only three-and-twenty, though steady
beyond anything.  And he had it from most undeniable authority, and not
one, but many."

"Stuff and nonsense!  I don't believe a word of it.  It's all a got-up
story.  Go to the window, missy; I thought I heard a horse.  See if the
doctor's coming."

"Not got up by me, brother, nor yet by Solomon, who, whatever else he
may be--and I don't deny he has oddities--has made his will and parted
his property equal between such kin as he's friends with; though, for
my part, I think there are times when some should be considered more
than others.  But Solomon makes it no secret what he means to do."

"The more fool he!" said Mr. Featherstone, with some difficulty;
breaking into a severe fit of coughing that required Mary Garth to
stand near him, so that she did not find out whose horses they were
which presently paused stamping on the gravel before the door.

Before Mr. Featherstone's cough was quiet, Rosamond entered, bearing up
her riding-habit with much grace.  She bowed ceremoniously to Mrs.
Waule, who said stiffly, "How do you do, miss?" smiled and nodded
silently to Mary, and remained standing till the coughing should cease,
and allow her uncle to notice her.

"Heyday, miss!" he said at last, "you have a fine color.  Where's Fred?"

"Seeing about the horses.  He will be in presently."

"Sit down, sit down.  Mrs. Waule, you'd better go."

Even those neighbors who had called Peter Featherstone an old fox, had
never accused him of being insincerely polite, and his sister was quite
used to the peculiar absence of ceremony with which he marked his sense
of blood-relationship. Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that
entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in
the Almighty's intentions about families.  She rose slowly without any
sign of resentment, and said in her usual muffled monotone, "Brother, I
hope the new doctor will be able to do something for you.  Solomon says
there's great talk of his cleverness.  I'm sure it's my wish you should
be spared.  And there's none more ready to nurse you than your own
sister and your own nieces, if you'd only say the word.  There's
Rebecca, and Joanna, and Elizabeth, you know."

"Ay, ay, I remember--you'll see I've remembered 'em all--all dark and
ugly.  They'd need have some money, eh?  There never was any beauty in
the women of our family; but the Featherstones have always had some
money, and the Waules too.  Waule had money too.  A warm man was Waule.
Ay, ay; money's a good egg; and if you 've got money to leave behind
you, lay it in a warm nest.  Good-by, Mrs. Waule." Here Mr.
Featherstone pulled at both sides of his wig as if he wanted to deafen
himself, and his sister went away ruminating on this oracular speech of
his.  Notwithstanding her jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary Garth,
there remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a
persuasion that her brother Peter Featherstone could never leave his
chief property away from his blood-relations:--else, why had the
Almighty carried off his two wives both childless, after he had gained
so much by manganese and things, turning up when nobody expected
it?--and why was there a Lowick parish church, and the Waules and
Powderells all sitting in the same pew for generations, and the
Featherstone pew next to them, if, the Sunday after her brother Peter's
death, everybody was to know that the property was gone out of the
family?  The human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so
preposterous a result was not strictly conceivable.  But we are
frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.

When Fred came in the old man eyed him with a peculiar twinkle, which
the younger had often had reason to interpret as pride in the
satisfactory details of his appearance.

"You two misses go away," said Mr. Featherstone.  "I want to speak to
Fred."

"Come into my room, Rosamond, you will not mind the cold for a little
while," said Mary.  The two girls had not only known each other in
childhood, but had been at the same provincial school together (Mary as
an articled pupil), so that they had many memories in common, and liked
very well to talk in private.  Indeed, this tete-a-tete was one of
Rosamond's objects in coming to Stone Court.

Old Featherstone would not begin the dialogue till the door had been
closed.  He continued to look at Fred with the same twinkle and with
one of his habitual grimaces, alternately screwing and widening his
mouth; and when he spoke, it was in a low tone, which might be taken
for that of an informer ready to be bought off, rather than for the
tone of an offended senior.  He was not a man to feel any strong moral
indignation even on account of trespasses against himself.  It was
natural that others should want to get an advantage over him, but then,
he was a little too cunning for them.

"So, sir, you've been paying ten per cent for money which you've
promised to pay off by mortgaging my land when I'm dead and gone, eh?
You put my life at a twelvemonth, say.  But I can alter my will yet."

Fred blushed.  He had not borrowed money in that way, for excellent
reasons.  But he was conscious of having spoken with some confidence
(perhaps with more than he exactly remembered) about his prospect of
getting Featherstone's land as a future means of paying present debts.

"I don't know what you refer to, sir.  I have certainly never borrowed
any money on such an insecurity.  Please do explain."

"No, sir, it's you must explain.  I can alter my will yet, let me tell
you.  I'm of sound mind--can reckon compound interest in my head, and
remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago.  What
the deuce?  I'm under eighty.  I say, you must contradict this story."

"I have contradicted it, sir," Fred answered, with a touch of
impatience, not remembering that his uncle did not verbally
discriminate contradicting from disproving, though no one was further
from confounding the two ideas than old Featherstone, who often
wondered that so many fools took his own assertions for proofs.  "But I
contradict it again.  The story is a silly lie."

"Nonsense! you must bring dockiments.  It comes from authority."

"Name the authority, and make him name the man of whom I borrowed the
money, and then I can disprove the story."

"It's pretty good authority, I think--a man who knows most of what goes
on in Middlemarch.  It's that fine, religious, charitable uncle o'
yours.  Come now!" Here Mr. Featherstone had his peculiar inward shake
which signified merriment.

"Mr. Bulstrode?"

"Who else, eh?"

"Then the story has grown into this lie out of some sermonizing words
he may have let fall about me.  Do they pretend that he named the man
who lent me the money?"

"If there is such a man, depend upon it Bulstrode knows him.  But,
supposing you only tried to get the money lent, and didn't get
it--Bulstrode 'ud know that too.  You bring me a writing from Bulstrode
to say he doesn't believe you've ever promised to pay your debts out o'
my land.  Come now!"

Mr. Featherstone's face required its whole scale of grimaces as a
muscular outlet to his silent triumph in the soundness of his faculties.

Fred felt himself to be in a disgusting dilemma.

"You must be joking, sir.  Mr. Bulstrode, like other men, believes
scores of things that are not true, and he has a prejudice against me.
I could easily get him to write that he knew no facts in proof of the
report you speak of, though it might lead to unpleasantness.  But I
could hardly ask him to write down what he believes or does not believe
about me." Fred paused an instant, and then added, in politic appeal to
his uncle's vanity, "That is hardly a thing for a gentleman to ask."
But he was disappointed in the result.

"Ay, I know what you mean.  You'd sooner offend me than Bulstrode.  And
what's he?--he's got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of.  A
speckilating fellow!  He may come down any day, when the devil leaves
off backing him.  And that's what his religion means: he wants God
A'mighty to come in.  That's nonsense!  There's one thing I made out
pretty clear when I used to go to church--and it's this: God A'mighty
sticks to the land.  He promises land, and He gives land, and He makes
chaps rich with corn and cattle.  But you take the other side.  You
like Bulstrode and speckilation better than Featherstone and land."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Fred, rising, standing with his back to
the fire and beating his boot with his whip.  "I like neither Bulstrode
nor speculation." He spoke rather sulkily, feeling himself stalemated.

"Well, well, you can do without me, that's pretty clear," said old
Featherstone, secretly disliking the possibility that Fred would show
himself at all independent.  "You neither want a bit of land to make a
squire of you instead of a starving parson, nor a lift of a hundred
pound by the way.  It's all one to me.  I can make five codicils if I
like, and I shall keep my bank-notes for a nest-egg. It's all one to
me."

Fred colored again.  Featherstone had rarely given him presents of
money, and at this moment it seemed almost harder to part with the
immediate prospect of bank-notes than with the more distant prospect of
the land.

"I am not ungrateful, sir.  I never meant to show disregard for any
kind intentions you might have towards me.  On the contrary."

"Very good.  Then prove it.  You bring me a letter from Bulstrode
saying he doesn't believe you've been cracking and promising to pay
your debts out o' my land, and then, if there's any scrape you've got
into, we'll see if I can't back you a bit.  Come now!  That's a
bargain.  Here, give me your arm.  I'll try and walk round the room."

Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a
little sorry for the unloved, unvenerated old man, who with his
dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable in walking.  While
giving his arm, he thought that he should not himself like to be an old
fellow with his constitution breaking up; and he waited
good-temperedly, first before the window to hear the wonted remarks
about the guinea-fowls and the weather-cock, and then before the scanty
book-shelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were Josephus,
Culpepper, Klopstock's "Messiah," and several volumes of the
"Gentleman's Magazine."

"Read me the names o' the books.  Come now! you're a college man."

Fred gave him the titles.

"What did missy want with more books?  What must you be bringing her
more books for?"

"They amuse her, sir.  She is very fond of reading."

"A little too fond," said Mr. Featherstone, captiously.  "She was for
reading when she sat with me.  But I put a stop to that.  She's got the
newspaper to read out loud.  That's enough for one day, I should think.
I can't abide to see her reading to herself.  You mind and not bring
her any more books, do you hear?"

"Yes, sir, I hear." Fred had received this order before, and had
secretly disobeyed it.  He intended to disobey it again.

"Ring the bell," said Mr. Featherstone; "I want missy to come down."

Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends.
They did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet-table near
the window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and
applied little touches of her finger-tips to her hair--hair of
infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow.  Mary Garth seemed all
the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs--the one in the
glass, and the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of
heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an
ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the
meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite.
Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of
Rosamond, and the slim figure displayed by her riding-habit had
delicate undulations.  In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her
brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some
called her an angel.  Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an
ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and
stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in
satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues.  Plainness has
its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt
either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the
repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in
contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce
some effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase.
At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attained that
perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to
the less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities
ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required.  Her shrewdness
had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never
carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude
towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be
contented, did something to make her so.  Advancing womanhood had
tempered her plainness, which was of a good human sort, such as the
mothers of our race have very commonly worn in all latitudes under a
more or less becoming headgear.  Rembrandt would have painted her with
pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the canvas
with intelligent honesty.  For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was
Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor
indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood
she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.  When she and Rosamond
happened both to be reflected in the glass, she said, laughingly--

"What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy!  You are the most
unbecoming companion."

"Oh no!  No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and
useful, Mary.  Beauty is of very little consequence in reality," said
Rosamond, turning her head towards Mary, but with eyes swerving towards
the new view of her neck in the glass.

"You mean my beauty," said Mary, rather sardonically.

Rosamond thought, "Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill." Aloud
she said, "What have you been doing lately?"

"I?  Oh, minding the house--pouring out syrup--pretending to be amiable
and contented--learning to have a bad opinion of everybody."

"It is a wretched life for you."

"No," said Mary, curtly, with a little toss of her head.  "I think my
life is pleasanter than your Miss Morgan's."

"Yes; but Miss Morgan is so uninteresting, and not young."

"She is interesting to herself, I suppose; and I am not at all sure
that everything gets easier as one gets older."

"No," said Rosamond, reflectively; "one wonders what such people do,
without any prospect.  To be sure, there is religion as a support.
But," she added, dimpling, "it is very different with you, Mary.  You
may have an offer."

"Has any one told you he means to make me one?"

"Of course not.  I mean, there is a gentleman who may fall in love with
you, seeing you almost every day."

A certain change in Mary's face was chiefly determined by the resolve
not to show any change.

"Does that always make people fall in love?" she answered, carelessly;
"it seems to me quite as often a reason for detesting each other."

"Not when they are interesting and agreeable.  I hear that Mr. Lydgate
is both."

"Oh, Mr. Lydgate!" said Mary, with an unmistakable lapse into
indifference.  "You want to know something about him," she added, not
choosing to indulge Rosamond's indirectness.

"Merely, how you like him."

"There is no question of liking at present.  My liking always wants
some little kindness to kindle it.  I am not magnanimous enough to like
people who speak to me without seeming to see me."

"Is he so haughty?" said Rosamond, with heightened satisfaction.  "You
know that he is of good family?"

"No; he did not give that as a reason."

"Mary! you are the oddest girl.  But what sort of looking man is he?
Describe him to me."

"How can one describe a man?  I can give you an inventory: heavy
eyebrows, dark eyes, a straight nose, thick dark hair, large solid
white hands--and--let me see--oh, an exquisite cambric
pocket-handkerchief.  But you will see him.  You know this is about the
time of his visits."

Rosamond blushed a little, but said, meditatively, "I rather like a
haughty manner.  I cannot endure a rattling young man."

"I did not tell you that Mr. Lydgate was haughty; but il y en a pour
tous les gouts, as little Mamselle used to say, and if any girl can
choose the particular sort of conceit she would like, I should think it
is you, Rosy."

"Haughtiness is not conceit; I call Fred conceited."

"I wish no one said any worse of him.  He should be more careful.  Mrs.
Waule has been telling uncle that Fred is very unsteady." Mary spoke
from a girlish impulse which got the better of her judgment.  There was
a vague uneasiness associated with the word "unsteady" which she hoped
Rosamond might say something to dissipate.  But she purposely abstained
from mentioning Mrs. Waule's more special insinuation.

"Oh, Fred is horrid!" said Rosamond.  She would not have allowed
herself so unsuitable a word to any one but Mary.

"What do you mean by horrid?"

"He is so idle, and makes papa so angry, and says he will not take
orders."

"I think Fred is quite right."

"How can you say he is quite right, Mary?  I thought you had more sense
of religion."

"He is not fit to be a clergyman."

"But he ought to be fit."--"Well, then, he is not what he ought to be.
I know some other people who are in the same case."

"But no one approves of them.  I should not like to marry a clergyman;
but there must be clergymen."

"It does not follow that Fred must be one."

"But when papa has been at the expense of educating him for it!  And
only suppose, if he should have no fortune left him?"

"I can suppose that very well," said Mary, dryly.

"Then I wonder you can defend Fred," said Rosamond, inclined to push
this point.

"I don't defend him," said Mary, laughing; "I would defend any parish
from having him for a clergyman."

"But of course if he were a clergyman, he must be different."

"Yes, he would be a great hypocrite; and he is not that yet."

"It is of no use saying anything to you, Mary.  You always take Fred's
part."

"Why should I not take his part?" said Mary, lighting up.  "He would
take mine.  He is the only person who takes the least trouble to oblige
me."

"You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary," said Rosamond, with her
gravest mildness; "I would not tell mamma for the world."

"What would you not tell her?" said Mary, angrily.

"Pray do not go into a rage, Mary," said Rosamond, mildly as ever.

"If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that
I would not marry him if he asked me.  But he is not going to do so,
that I am aware.  He certainly never has asked me."

"Mary, you are always so violent."

"And you are always so exasperating."

"I?  What can you blame me for?"

"Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating.  There is the
bell--I think we must go down."

"I did not mean to quarrel," said Rosamond, putting on her hat.

"Quarrel?  Nonsense; we have not quarrelled.  If one is not to get into
a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

"Am I to repeat what you have said?" "Just as you please.  I never say
what I am afraid of having repeated.  But let us go down."

Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long
enough to see him; for Mr. Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him,
and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favorite song of
his--"Flow on, thou shining river"--after she had sung "Home, sweet
home" (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of
the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as
fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.

Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and
assuring missy that her voice was as clear as a blackbird's, when Mr.
Lydgate's horse passed the window.

His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged
patient--who can hardly believe that medicine would not "set him up" if
the doctor were only clever enough--added to his general disbelief in
Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision
of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to
introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to
speak of Mary Garth in that light.  Nothing escaped Lydgate in
Rosamond's graceful behavior: how delicately she waived the notice
which the old man's want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet
gravity, not showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing
them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she addressed herself with
so much good-natured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly examining
Mary more fully than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in
Rosamond's eyes.  But Mary from some cause looked rather out of temper.

"Miss Rosy has been singing me a song--you've nothing to say against
that, eh, doctor?" said Mr. Featherstone.  "I like it better than your
physic."

"That has made me forget how the time was going," said Rosamond, rising
to reach her hat, which she had laid aside before singing, so that her
flower-like head on its white stem was seen in perfection above-her
riding-habit. "Fred, we must really go."

"Very good," said Fred, who had his own reasons for not being in the
best spirits, and wanted to get away.

"Miss Vincy is a musician?" said Lydgate, following her with his eyes.
(Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness
that she was being looked at.  She was by nature an actress of parts
that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and
so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

"The best in Middlemarch, I'll be bound," said Mr. Featherstone, "let
the next be who she will.  Eh, Fred?  Speak up for your sister."

"I'm afraid I'm out of court, sir.  My evidence would be good for
nothing."

"Middlemarch has not a very high standard, uncle," said Rosamond, with
a pretty lightness, going towards her whip, which lay at a distance.

Lydgate was quick in anticipating her.  He reached the whip before she
did, and turned to present it to her.  She bowed and looked at him: he
of course was looking at her, and their eyes met with that peculiar
meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden
divine clearance of haze.  I think Lydgate turned a little paler than
usual, but Rosamond blushed deeply and felt a certain astonishment.
After that, she was really anxious to go, and did not know what sort of
stupidity her uncle was talking of when she went to shake hands with
him.

Yet this result, which she took to be a mutual impression, called
falling in love, was just what Rosamond had contemplated beforehand.
Ever since that important new arrival in Middlemarch she had woven a
little future, of which something like this scene was the necessary
beginning.  Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly
escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a
circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native
merit has urged itself in vain.  And a stranger was absolutely
necessary to Rosamond's social romance, which had always turned on a
lover and bridegroom who was not a Middlemarcher, and who had no
connections at all like her own: of late, indeed, the construction
seemed to demand that he should somehow be related to a baronet.  Now
that she and the stranger had met, reality proved much more moving than
anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great
epoch of her life.  She judged of her own symptoms as those of
awakening love, and she held it still more natural that Mr. Lydgate
should have fallen in love at first sight of her.  These things
happened so often at balls, and why not by the morning light, when the
complexion showed all the better for it?  Rosamond, though no older
than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with; but she, for
her part, had remained indifferent and fastidiously critical towards
both fresh sprig and faded bachelor.  And here was Mr. Lydgate suddenly
corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch,
carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good family, and
possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle-class
heaven, rank; a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially
delightful to enslave: in fact, a man who had touched her nature quite
newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was better than
any fancied "might-be" such as she was in the habit of opposing to the
actual.

Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied
and inclined to be silent.  Rosamond, whose basis for her structure had
the usual airy slightness, was of remarkably detailed and realistic
imagination when the foundation had been once presupposed; and before
they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and introductions
of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch, and
foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband's high-bred relatives
at a distance, whose finished manners she could appropriate as
thoroughly as she had done her school accomplishments, preparing
herself thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come.  There
was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her previsions: she cared
about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that
was to pay for them.

Fred's mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his
ready hopefulness could not immediately quell.  He saw no way of
eluding Featherstone's stupid demand without incurring consequences
which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling it.  His father
was already out of humor with him, and would be still more so if he
were the occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and
the Bulstrodes.  Then, he himself hated having to go and speak to his
uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking wine he had said many
foolish things about Featherstone's property, and these had been
magnified by report.  Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a
fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like
Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding.
But--those expectations!  He really had them, and he saw no agreeable
alternative if he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt
which galled him extremely, and old Featherstone had almost bargained
to pay it off.  The whole affair was miserably small: his debts were
small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent.
Fred had known men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the
smallness of his scrapes.  Such ruminations naturally produced a streak
of misanthropic bitterness.  To be born the son of a Middlemarch
manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such
men as Mainwaring and Vyan--certainly life was a poor business, when a
spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything,
had so poor an outlook.

It had not occurred to Fred that the introduction of Bulstrode's name
in the matter was a fiction of old Featherstone's; nor could this have
made any difference to his position.  He saw plainly enough that the
old man wanted to exercise his power by tormenting him a little, and
also probably to get some satisfaction out of seeing him on unpleasant
terms with Bulstrode.  Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his
uncle Featherstone's soul, though in reality half what he saw there was
no more than the reflex of his own inclinations.  The difficult task of
knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is
chiefly made up of their own wishes.

Fred's main point of debate with himself was, whether he should tell
his father, or try to get through the affair without his father's
knowledge.  It was probably Mrs. Waule who had been talking about him;
and if Mary Garth had repeated Mrs. Waule's report to Rosamond, it
would be sure to reach his father, who would as surely question him
about it.  He said to Rosamond, as they slackened their pace--

"Rosy, did Mary tell you that Mrs. Waule had said anything about me?"

"Yes, indeed, she did."

"What?"

"That you were very unsteady."

"Was that all?"

"I should think that was enough, Fred."

"You are sure she said no more?"

"Mary mentioned nothing else.  But really, Fred, I think you ought to
be ashamed."

"Oh, fudge!  Don't lecture me.  What did Mary say about it?"

"I am not obliged to tell you.  You care so very much what Mary says,
and you are too rude to allow me to speak."

"Of course I care what Mary says.  She is the best girl I know."

"I should never have thought she was a girl to fall in love with."

"How do you know what men would fall in love with?  Girls never know."

"At least, Fred, let me advise _you_ not to fall in love with her, for
she says she would not marry you if you asked her."

"She might have waited till I did ask her."

"I knew it would nettle you, Fred."

"Not at all.  She would not have said so if you had not provoked her."
Before reaching home, Fred concluded that he would tell the whole
affair as simply as possible to his father, who might perhaps take on
himself the unpleasant business of speaking to Bulstrode.





BOOK II.




OLD AND YOUNG.

 The Brooke family visits Casaubon's home at Lowick in anticipation of the wedding. Dorothea is charmed, but Celia thinks the place dark, depressing and dreary. Dorothea is already submissive, leaving all choices to Casaubon. They meet in the garden an artist sketching-Mr. Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's second cousin, whom Casaubon supports. Will is young and handsome and thinks Dorothea has the voice of an Aeolian harp. Casaubon complains about Will's lack of seriousness. Will believes that his genius needs lots of room; he is extreme, like Dorothea. He expects the universe to support him. The narrator suddenly switches from outside the characters to inside. We see Casaubon's egotism in his own mind, his idea that everything exists for him. He is not really excited about his marriage and wants Dorothea to bring her sister on the honeymoon so she won't be bored while he is engaged in scholarly research in Rome. Dorothea believes her marriage will be an initiation into a higher life. At a dinner party at Brooke's we meet the mayor of Middlemarch, Mr. Vincy, who is related to everyone important in the county, and Dr. Lydgate, the new doctor in town, and Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, who is courting Lydgate as the administrator of the hospital. Lydgate is young, poor, and ambitious but attracted to beautiful and blonde Rosamond Vincy. He thinks Dorothea too serious and severe for a man. At breakfast in the Vincy household, we meet Fred and his sister, Rosamond. Fred is a likeable but lazy young man who has failed to take a degree and waits instead for his uncle Featherstone to die and leave him his money. The brother and sister ride off to Stone Court to pay a call to Uncle Featherstone to keep on his good side. He is ill, and all the relatives are gathered around, hoping to get their share. Uncle Featherstone has heard Fred has gambling debts and threatens to change his will, but Fred denies the charges. He is in love with Mary Garth, the plain and poor housekeeper of Mr. Featherstone. She is as sensible as Fred is irresponsible and claims she would never  marry Fred, even though he has not yet asked her.

