Chapter: "'Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hacia nosotros viene
    sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza
    un yelmo de oro?' 'Lo que veo y columbro,' respondio Sancho,
    'no es sino un hombre sobre un as no pardo como el mio, que
    trae sobre la cabeza una cosa que relumbra.' 'Pues ese es el
    yelmo de Mambrino,' dijo Don Quijote."--CERVANTES.

    "'Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a
    dapple-gray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?' 'What I
    see,' answered Sancho, 'is nothing but a man on a gray ass
    like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' 'Just
    so,' answered Don Quixote: 'and that resplendent object is
    the helmet of Mambrino.'"


"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy smiling
way, taking up Sir James Chettam's remark that he was studying Davy's
Agricultural Chemistry.  "Well, now, Sir Humphry Davy; I dined with him
years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was there too--the poet
Wordsworth, you know.  Now there was something singular.  I was at
Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met him--and I dined
with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's an oddity in
things, now.  But Davy was there: he was a poet too.  Or, as I may say,
Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two.  That was true in every
sense, you know."

Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual.  In the beginning of
dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the
mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably.  She wondered how a
man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality.  His manners, she
thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair and his
deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke.  He had the
spare form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different
as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type
represented by Sir James Chettam.

"I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said this excellent baronet,
"because I am going to take one of the farms into my own hands, and see
if something cannot be done in setting a good pattern of farming among
my tenants.  Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke?"

"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into
electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlor of
your cow-house. It won't do.  I went into science a great deal myself
at one time; but I saw it would not do.  It leads to everything; you
can let nothing alone.  No, no--see that your tenants don't sell their
straw, and that kind of thing; and give them draining-tiles, you know.
But your fancy farming will not do--the most expensive sort of whistle
you can buy: you may as well keep a pack of hounds."

"Surely," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding out
how men can make the most of the land which supports them all, than in
keeping dogs and horses only to gallop over it.  It is not a sin to
make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good of all."

She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir
James had appealed to her.  He was accustomed to do so, and she had
often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was
her brother-in-law.

Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was
speaking, and seemed to observe her newly.

"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon.  "I remember when we were all
reading Adam Smith.  _There_ is a book, now.  I took in all the new
ideas at one time--human perfectibility, now.  But some say, history
moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it
myself.  The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far--over
the hedge, in fact.  It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw it
would not do.  I pulled up; I pulled up in time.  But not too hard.  I
have always been in favor of a little theory: we must have Thought;
else we shall be landed back in the dark ages.  But talking of books,
there is Southey's 'Peninsular War.' I am reading that of a morning.
You know Southey?"

"No" said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous
reason, and thinking of the book only.  "I have little leisure for such
literature just now.  I have been using up my eyesight on old
characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I
am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect
reader.  It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the
inward sources; I live too much with the dead.  My mind is something
like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying
mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and
confusing changes.  But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution
about my eyesight."

This was the first time that Mr. Casaubon had spoken at any length.  He
delivered himself with precision, as if he had been called upon to make
a public statement; and the balanced sing-song neatness of his speech,
occasionally corresponded to by a movement of his head, was the more
conspicuous from its contrast with good Mr. Brooke's scrappy
slovenliness.  Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most
interesting man she had ever seen, not excepting even Monsieur Liret,
the Vaudois clergyman who had given conferences on the history of the
Waldenses.  To reconstruct a past world, doubtless with a view to the
highest purposes of truth--what a work to be in any way present at, to
assist in, though only as a lamp-holder!  This elevating thought lifted
her above her annoyance at being twitted with her ignorance of
political economy, that never-explained science which was thrust as an
extinguisher over all her lights.

"But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an
opportunity of saying.  "I should have thought you would enter a little
into the pleasures of hunting.  I wish you would let me send over a
chestnut horse for you to try.  It has been trained for a lady.  I saw
you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not worthy of you.  My
groom shall bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention
the time."

"Thank you, you are very good.  I mean to give up riding.  I shall not
ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to this brusque resolution by a
little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when
she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon.

"No, that is too hard," said Sir James, in a tone of reproach that
showed strong interest.  "Your sister is given to self-mortification,
is she not?" he continued, turning to Celia, who sat at his right hand.

"I think she is," said Celia, feeling afraid lest she should say
something that would not please her sister, and blushing as prettily as
possible above her necklace.  "She likes giving up."

"If that were true, Celia, my giving-up would be self-indulgence, not
self-mortification. But there may be good reasons for choosing not to
do what is very agreeable," said Dorothea.

Mr. Brooke was speaking at the same time, but it was evident that Mr.
Casaubon was observing Dorothea, and she was aware of it.

"Exactly," said Sir James.  "You give up from some high, generous
motive."

"No, indeed, not exactly.  I did not say that of myself," answered
Dorothea, reddening.  Unlike Celia, she rarely blushed, and only from
high delight or anger.  At this moment she felt angry with the perverse
Sir James.  Why did he not pay attention to Celia, and leave her to
listen to Mr. Casaubon?--if that learned man would only talk, instead
of allowing himself to be talked to by Mr. Brooke, who was just then
informing him that the Reformation either meant something or it did
not, that he himself was a Protestant to the core, but that Catholicism
was a fact; and as to refusing an acre of your ground for a Romanist
chapel, all men needed the bridle of religion, which, properly
speaking, was the dread of a Hereafter.

"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr. Brooke, as if
to explain the insight just manifested.  "I know something of all
schools.  I knew Wilberforce in his best days.  Do you know
Wilberforce?"

Mr. Casaubon said, "No."

"Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went
into Parliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the
independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."

Mr. Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.

"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents.  I
began a long while ago to collect documents.  They want arranging, but
when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an
answer.  I have documents at my back.  But now, how do you arrange your
documents?"

"In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled air
of effort.

"Ah, pigeon-holes will not do.  I have tried pigeon-holes, but
everything gets mixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is
in A or Z."

"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said
Dorothea.  "I would letter them all, and then make a list of subjects
under each letter."

Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke, "You have
an excellent secretary at hand, you perceive."

"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies
meddle with my documents.  Young ladies are too flighty."

Dorothea felt hurt.  Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some
special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in
his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other
fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on _her_.

When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said--

"How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!"

"Celia!  He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw.
He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke.  He has the same deep
eye-sockets."

"Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?"

"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him," said
Dorothea, walking away a little.

"Mr. Casaubon is so sallow."

"All the better.  I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a
cochon de lait."

"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise.  "I never heard
you make such a comparison before."

"Why should I make it before the occasion came?  It is a good
comparison: the match is perfect."

Miss Brooke was clearly forgetting herself, and Celia thought so.

"I wonder you show temper, Dorothea."

"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as
if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul
in a man's face."

"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not without a touch of naive
malice.

"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice of
decision.  "Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet on
Biblical Cosmology."

"He talks very little," said Celia

"There is no one for him to talk to."

Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I
believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity.
She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest.
Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a
husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in
the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too
religious for family comfort.  Notions and scruples were like spilt
needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating.

When Miss Brooke was at the tea-table, Sir James came to sit down by
her, not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive.  Why
should he?  He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and
manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted
by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.  She was thoroughly
charming to him, but of course he theorized a little about his
attachment.  He was made of excellent human dough, and had the rare
merit of knowing that his talents, even if let loose, would not set the
smallest stream in the county on fire: hence he liked the prospect of a
wife to whom he could say, "What shall we do?" about this or that; who
could help her husband out with reasons, and would also have the
property qualification for doing so.  As to the excessive religiousness
alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it
consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage.  In
short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready
to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could
always put down when he liked.  Sir James had no idea that he should
ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose
cleverness he delighted.  Why not?  A man's mind--what there is of
it--has always the advantage of being masculine,--as the smallest
birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,--and even
his ignorance is of a sounder quality.  Sir James might not have
originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest
personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.

"Let me hope that you will rescind that resolution about the horse,
Miss Brooke," said the persevering admirer.  "I assure you, riding is
the most healthy of exercises."

"I am aware of it," said Dorothea, coldly.  "I think it would do Celia
good--if she would take to it."

"But you are such a perfect horsewoman."

"Excuse me; I have had very little practice, and I should be easily
thrown."

"Then that is a reason for more practice.  Every lady ought to be a
perfect horsewoman, that she may accompany her husband."

"You see how widely we differ, Sir James.  I have made up my mind that
I ought not to be a perfect horsewoman, and so I should never
correspond to your pattern of a lady." Dorothea looked straight before
her, and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air of a
handsome boy, in amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her
admirer.

"I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution.  It is
not possible that you should think horsemanship wrong."

"It is quite possible that I should think it wrong for me."

"Oh, why?" said Sir James, in a tender tone of remonstrance.

Mr. Casaubon had come up to the table, teacup in hand, and was
listening.

"We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed, in his
measured way.  "Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in
the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air.  We must keep
the germinating grain away from the light."

Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the
speaker.  Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life,
and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could
illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning
almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!

Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have
gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions,
which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization.
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of
pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?

"Certainly," said good Sir James.  "Miss Brooke shall not be urged to
tell reasons she would rather be silent upon.  I am sure her reasons
would do her honor."

He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had
looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom
he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm
towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way, as for a
clergyman of some distinction.

However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with
Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to
Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a house in town,
and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London.  Away from her sister,
Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the
second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty,
though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the
elder sister.  He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all
respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to
having the best.  He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who
pretended not to expect it.

 The same evening there are guests at dinner at Tipton Grange. They are Sir James Chettam, a handsome young landlord, and Mr. Edward Casaubon a middle-aged clergyman from the neighboring parish of Lowick. Chettam is deeply impressed by Dorotheas beauty and character. He is half in love with her and tries to make himself agreeable. Unfortunately, Dorothea is oblivious to his interest. She believes he is interested in Celia and his frequent visits are due to her sister. She vaguely believes the only suitable marriage for herself is one of dedicated service to some great man resembling Hooker, the famous thinker, or Milton, the great poet, after he went blind. Thus, all Chettams efforts to impress her are politely rebuffed. She pays attention only to Mr. Casaubon. The clergyman is pale and spare with iron-grey hair and deep eye sockets. His appearance reminds Dorothea of Locks, the great philosopher. While to Celia, who promptly notes "his two white moles with hairs on them," he is very ugly. At the dinner table the talkative host, Mr. Brooke and Chettam are discussing Davys book on "Agricultural Chemistry." Chettam declares his intention of modernizing one of his farms according to the new methods in Davys book. Brooke denounces "fancy farming" to Dorotheas great disapproval. Her uncle brushes her views aside as "young ladies dont understand political economy, you know." Bored with the same old talk of property, Dorothea is willing to be impressed by Casaubon, with his air of reserve and scholarship. She feels he is a man with whom "there could be some spiritual communion. " They get involved in a serious discussion on a church controversy about the Vandois clergy. Meanwhile, Chettam is not at all jealous of "a dried book worm towards fifty" and chats with Celia. Celia herself has been observing events closely. She concludes that her sister quite despises Chettam and would never marry him.

