Let it alone! You bring it, missy, and lay it down here. Now you go away again till I call you. You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?


Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me a present the other day, else, of course, I should not have thought of the matter.


I am very much obliged to you, sir,


Come, don’t you think it worth your while to count ’em? You take money like a lord; I suppose you lose it like one.


I thought I was not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, sir. But I shall be very happy to count them.


It is very handsome of you, sir.


I should think it is. I should think it handsome.


I assure you, sir, I am very grateful,


So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one you’ve got to trust to.


Yes, indeed: I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more cramped than I have been. It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a broken-winded hunter, and see men, who, are not half such good judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargains.


Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough for that, I reckon—and you’ll have twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape,


You are very good, sir,


Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won’t get much out of his spekilations, I think. He’s got a pretty strong string round your father’s leg, by what I hear, eh?


My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir.


Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find ’em out without his telling. He’ll never have much to leave you: he’ll most-like die without a will—he’s the sort of man to do it—let ’em make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won’t get much by his dying without a will, though you are the eldest son.


Shall I destroy this letter of Mr. Bulstrode’s, sir?


Ay, ay, I don’t want it. It’s worth no money to me.


Am I wanted up-stairs?


No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up. May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?


Pray sit down, you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave.


Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.


I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.


Confound John Waule! I did not mean to make you angry. I didn’t know you had any reason for being grateful to me. I forgot what a great service you think it if any one snuffs a candle for you.


Oh, I am not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I had common-sense. I really often feel as if I could understand a little more than I ever hear even from young gentlemen who have been to college.


I don’t care how merry you are at my expense this morning. I thought you looked so sad when you came up-stairs. It is a shame you should stay here to be bullied in that way.


Oh, I have an easy life—by comparison. I have tried being a teacher, and I am not fit for that: my mind is too fond of wandering on its own way. I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it. Everything here I can do as well as any one else could; perhaps better than some—Rosy, for example. Though she is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales.


Rosy!


Come, Fred! you have no right to be so critical.


Do you mean anything particular—just now?


No, I mean something general—always.


Oh, that I am idle and extravagant. Well, I am not fit to be a poor man. I should not have made a bad fellow if I had been rich.


You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to call you,


Well, I couldn’t do my duty as a clergyman, any more than you could do yours as a governess. You ought to have a little fellow-feeling there, Mary.


I never said you ought to be a clergyman. There are other sorts of work. It seems to me very miserable not to resolve on some course and act accordingly.


So I could, if— If you were sure you should not have a fortune? I did not say that. You want to quarrel with me. It is too bad of you to be guided by what other people say about me.


How can I want to quarrel with you? I should be quarrelling with all my new books. However naughty you may be to other people, you are good to me.


Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despise me.


Yes, I do—a little,


You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about everything.


Yes, I should.


I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known—ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.


Let me see. I must go back on my experience. There is Juliet—she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while; and Brenda Troil—she had known Mordaunt Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable young man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a stranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, and Corinne—they may be said to have fallen in love with new men. Altogether, my experience is rather mixed.


When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellow—could do anything—I mean, if he were sure of being loved in return.


Not of the least use in the world for him to say he could be better. Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.


I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.


I think the goodness should come before he expects that.


You know better, Mary. Women don’t love men for their goodness.


Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad.


It is hardly fair to say I am bad.


I said nothing at all about you.


I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love me—if you will not promise to marry me—I mean, when I am able to marry.


If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly not promise ever to marry you.


I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me.


On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry you even if I did love you.


You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife. Of course: I am but three-and-twenty.


In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any other alteration. My father says an idle man ought not to exist, much less, be married.


Then I am to blow my brains out?


No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass your examination. I have heard Mr. Farebrother say it is disgracefully easy.


That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that cleverness has anything to do with it. I am ten times cleverer than many men who pass.


Dear me! that accounts for the curates like Mr. Crowse. Divide your cleverness by ten, and the quotient—dear me!—is able to take a degree. But that only shows you are ten times more idle than the others.


Well, if I did pass, you would not want me to go into the Church?


That is not the question—what I want you to do. You have a conscience of your own, I suppose. There! there is Mr. Lydgate. I must go and tell my uncle.


Mary, if you will not give me some encouragement, I shall get worse instead of better.


I will not give you any encouragement. Your friends would dislike it, and so would mine. My father would think it a disgrace to me if I accepted a man who got into debt, and would not work! Fred, you have always been so good, so generous to me. I am not ungrateful. But never speak to me in that way again.


Very well,


A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English.


You have come all the way from Paris to find me? Are all Englishmen like that?


I came because I could not live without trying to see you. You are lonely; I love you; I want you to consent to be my wife; I will wait, but I want you to promise that you will marry me—no one else.


I will tell you something. My foot really slipped.


I know, I know. It was a fatal accident—a dreadful stroke of calamity that bound me to you the more.


I meant to do it.


There was a secret, then. He was brutal to you: you hated him.


No! he wearied me; he was too fond: he would live in Paris, and not in my country; that was not agreeable to me.


Great God! And you planned to murder him?


I did not plan: it came to me in the play—I meant to do it. You are a good young man. But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.


What line shall you take, then?


Oh, I’m precious glad I’m not one of the Directors now. I shall vote for referring the matter to the Directors and the Medical Board together. I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders, Doctor. You medical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you will prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?


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


if he could have his way, he would not put disagreeable fellows anywhere.


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


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


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


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


You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner’s business to conduct the post-mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medical witness?


Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself. Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance of decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not to be a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of the stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so. Don’t you agree with me, Dr. Sprague?


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


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


You have studied music, probably?


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


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


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


Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer. But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors.


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


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


Tell me what you saw in London.


Very little. A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw country girls are always taken to.


Do you call yourself a raw country girl?


I assure you my mind is raw. I pass at Middlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But I am really afraid of you.


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


Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring all your nerves. Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate ill. He has an ear. You perceive, the bears will not always be taught.


Now then, Rosy! Some good rousing tunes first.


I can’t let you off, you know, because I have some beetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man till he has seen all we have to show him. Come now, let us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are too young and light for this kind of thing.


You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure. We are very stupid, and you have been used to something quite different.


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


You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased with those,


No, I mean something much nearer to me.


Do you care about dancing at all? I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance.


I would dance with you if you would allow me.


Oh! I was only going to say that we sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to know whether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come.


Not on the condition I mentioned.


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


The best girl in the world! He will be a happy fellow who gets her!


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


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


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


But my mother always gives way,


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


A man might see good arguments for changing once, and not see them for changing again,


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


About the dinner certainly, mother,


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


A mother is never partial. What do you think Tyke’s mother says about him?


Ah, poor creature! what indeed? She says the truth to herself, depend upon it.


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


Oh, nothing bad at all. He is a zealous fellow: not very learned, and not very wise, I think—because I don’t agree with him.


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


Oh poor things! poor things!


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


Mr. Lydgate, you don’t know my son: he always undervalues himself. I tell him he is undervaluing the God who made him, and made him a most excellent preacher.


That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lydgate away to my study, mother. I promised to show you my collection, shall we go?


My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies. Men of your profession don’t generally smoke. Nor of mine either, properly, I suppose. You will hear that pipe alleged against me by Bulstrode and Company. They don’t know how pleased the devil would be if I gave it up.


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


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


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


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


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


By the way, what has become of Trawley? I have quite lost sight of him. He was hot on the French social systems, and talked of going to the Backwoods to found a sort of Pythagorean community. Is he gone?


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


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


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


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


Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price. Suppose I ask you to look through my drawers and agree with me about all my new species? That would be good discipline, you know, for a young doctor who has to please his patients in Middlemarch. You must learn to be bored, remember. However, you shall have the monster on your own terms.


Don’t you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody’s nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humor? The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.


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


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


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


You mean of family ties?


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


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


Their daughter: an excellent girl.


She is very quiet—I have hardly noticed her.


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


I don’t understand,


Oh, she gauges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation—she is a favorite of mine. But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have our intrigues and our parties. I am a party man, for example, and Bulstrode is another. If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode.


What is there against Bulstrode?


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


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


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


What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding you?


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


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


Confound their petty politics!


I go for Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But why take it from the Vicar? He has none too much—has to insure his life, besides keeping house, and doing a vicar’s charities. Put forty pounds in his pocket and you’ll do no harm. He’s a good fellow, is Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to carry orders.


Ho, ho! Doctor, we must let you have your say. But what we have to consider is not anybody’s income—it’s the souls of the poor sick people He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke. I should vote against my conscience if I voted against Mr. Tyke—I should indeed.


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


Oh, damn the divisions! We have nothing to do with them here. Farebrother has been doing the work—what there was—without pay, and if pay is to be given, it should be given to him. I call it a confounded job to take the thing away from Farebrother.


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


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


Ah, here’s Minchin! Come, Doctor, I must have you on the right side, eh?


I hope so, at whatever cost to my feelings.


If there’s any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is turned out, I think,


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


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


And a devilish deal better than too much. Sick people can’t bear so much praying and preaching. And that methodistical sort of religion is bad for the spirits—bad for the inside, eh?


any public question, you know. I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and in the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as being at the disposal of the public—and, in short, my friends have convinced me that a chaplain with a salary—a salary, you know—is a very good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for the appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionable man, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind—and I am the last man to withhold my vote—under the circumstances, you know.


You don’t seem to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty as chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposed to supersede him.


Mr. Brooke has been fully informed of Mr. Farebrother’s character and position.


By his enemies,


I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here,


I’ll swear there is, though,


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


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


I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present. There is a casting-vote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lydgate: will you be good enough to write?


The thing is settled now. We all know how Mr. Lydgate will vote.


You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir. It may be offensive to others. But I shall not desist from voting with him on that account.


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


Come here, quick! else she will have changed her pose.


There lies antique beauty, not corpse-like even in death, but arrested in the complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my picture. However, she is married; I saw her wedding-ring on that wonderful left hand, otherwise I should have thought the sallow Geistlicher was her father. I saw him parting from her a good while ago, and just now I found her in that magnificent pose. Only think! he is perhaps rich, and would like to have her portrait taken. Ah! it is no use looking after her—there she goes! Let us follow her home!


No, no,


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


He is not my uncle. I tell you he is my second cousin,


Schön, schön. Don’t be snappish. You are not angry with me for thinking Mrs. Second-Cousin the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw?


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


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


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


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


Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her existence—the divinity passing into higher completeness and all but exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas. I am amateurish if you like: I do not think that all the universe is straining towards the obscure significance of your pictures.


But it is, my dear!—so far as it is straining through me, Adolf Naumann: that stands firm. See now! My existence presupposes the existence of the whole universe—does it not? and my function is to paint—and as a painter I have a conception which is altogether genialisch, of your great-aunt or second grandmother as a subject for a picture; therefore, the universe is straining towards that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth in the shape of me—not true?


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


Not at all: the result of the struggle is the same thing—picture or no picture—logically. Come now, my friend—you will help?


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


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


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


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


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


How is she to be called then?


Mrs. Casaubon.


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


Yes, suppose!


Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay a little longer? I am ready to stay if you wish it. Should you like to go to the Farnesina, Dorothea? It contains celebrated frescos designed or painted by Raphael, which most persons think it worth while to visit.


But do you care about them?


They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent the fable of Cupid and Psyche, which is probably the romantic invention of a literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned as a genuine mythical product. But if you like these wall-paintings we can easily drive thither; and you will then, I think, have seen the chief works of Raphael, any of which it were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome. He is the painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to be the opinion of cognoscenti.


My dear Dorothea, we must now think of all that is yet left undone, as a preliminary to our departure. I would fain have returned home earlier that we might have been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have been protracted beyond their anticipated period. I trust, however, that the time here has not been passed unpleasantly to you. Among the sights of Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking and in some respects edifying. I well remember that I considered it an epoch in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall of Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed I think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has been applied—‘See Rome and die:’ but in your case I would propose an emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happy wife.


I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stay—I mean, with the result so far as your studies are concerned,


Yes. I have been led farther than I had foreseen, and various subjects for annotation have presented themselves which, though I have no direct need of them, I could not pretermit. The task, notwithstanding the assistance of my amanuensis, has been a somewhat laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me from that too continuous prosecution of thought beyond the hours of study which has been the snare of my solitary life.


I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you. I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall be more useful to you, and be able to enter a little more into what interests you.


Doubtless, my dear. The notes I have here made will want sifting, and you can, if you please, extract them under my direction.


And all your notes. All those rows of volumes—will you not now do what you used to speak of?—will you not make up your mind what part of them you will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vast knowledge useful to the world? I will write to your dictation, or I will copy and extract what you tell me: I can be of no other use.


My love, you may rely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the different stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facile conjectures of ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain a temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever the trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matter lies entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements may be compassed by a narrow and superficial survey.


My judgment was a very superficial one—such as I am capable of forming. You showed me the rows of notebooks—you have often spoken of them—you have often said that they wanted digesting. But I never heard you speak of the writing that is to be published. Those were very simple facts, and my judgment went no farther. I only begged you to let me be of some good to you.


Come in. Yes, show him into the salon.


I was not aware that you and Mr. Casaubon were in Rome, until this morning, when I saw you in the Vatican Museum. I knew you at once—but—I mean, that I concluded Mr. Casaubon’s address would be found at the Poste Restante, and I was anxious to pay my respects to him and you as early as possible.


Pray sit down. He is not here now, but he will be glad to hear of you, I am sure. Mr. Casaubon is much engaged; but you will leave your address—will you not?—and he will write to you.


You are very good. My address is on my card. But if you will allow me I will call again to-morrow at an hour when Mr. Casaubon is likely to be at home.


He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can hardly see him except by an appointment. Especially now. We are about to leave Rome, and he is very busy. He is usually away almost from breakfast till dinner. But I am sure he will wish you to dine with us.


Something amuses you?


Yes. I am thinking of the sort of figure I cut the first time I saw you, when you annihilated my poor sketch with your criticism.


My criticism? Surely not. I always feel particularly ignorant about painting.


I suspected you of knowing so much, that you knew how to say just what was most cutting. You said—I dare say you don’t remember it as I do—that the relation of my sketch to nature was quite hidden from you. At least, you implied that.


That was really my ignorance. I must have said so only because I never could see any beauty in the pictures which my uncle told me all judges thought very fine. And I have gone about with just the same ignorance in Rome. There are comparatively few paintings that I can really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescos, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe—like a child present at great ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine—something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.


Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired. Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy the art of all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to pieces I should find it made up of many different threads. There is something in daubing a little one’s self, and having an idea of the process.


You mean perhaps to be a painter? You mean to make painting your profession? Mr. Casaubon will like to hear that you have chosen a profession.


No, oh no. I have quite made up my mind against it. It is too one-sided a life. I have been seeing a great deal of the German artists here: I travelled from Frankfort with one of them. Some are fine, even brilliant fellows—but I should not like to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the studio point of view.


That I can understand. And in Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures. But if you have a genius for painting, would it not be right to take that as a guide? Perhaps you might do better things than these—or different, so that there might not be so many pictures almost all alike in the same place.


A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while. And I should never succeed in anything by dint of drudgery. If things don’t come easily to me I never get them.


I have heard Mr. Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience,


Yes, I know Mr. Casaubon’s opinion. He and I differ.


Certainly you differ. I did not think of comparing you: such power of persevering devoted labor as Mr. Casaubon’s is not common.


No, indeed. And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown away, as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world. If Mr. Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble.


I do not understand you,


I merely mean, that the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have made good roads. When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw that he deafened himself in that direction: it was almost against his will that he read a Latin treatise written by a German. I was very sorry.


I regretted it especially, because of my gratitude and respect towards my cousin. It would not signify so much in a man whose talents and character were less distinguished.


How I wish I had learned German when I was at Lausanne! There were plenty of German teachers. But now I can be of no use.


Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning. I was wrong. I fear I hurt you and made the day more burdensome.


I am glad that you feel that, my dear,


But you do forgive me?


My dear Dorothea—‘who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of heaven nor earth:’—you do not think me worthy to be banished by that severe sentence. You are excited, my dear. And I also am feeling some unpleasant consequences of too much mental disturbance,


I think it is time for us to dress,


Nous câusames longtemps; elle était simple et bonne. Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien; Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l’aumône, Et tout en écoutant comme le coeur se donne, Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien; Elle emporta ma vie, et n’en sut jamais rien. Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation. On the contrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing her husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him than she had ever observed in any one before. To be sure, the listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted! Will talked a good deal himself, but what he said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that it seemed a gay little chime after the great bell. If Will was not always perfect, this was certainly one of his good days. He described touches of incident among the poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr. Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world’s ages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection. Mr. Casaubon’s studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a kind for that, and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but for himself he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as a whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him constructive. Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an item to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno or the Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world’s opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women, as indeed he had perceived in choosing her. Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon’s statement that his labors in the Library would be suspended for a couple of days, and that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason for staying in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should not go away without seeing a studio or two. Would not Mr. Casaubon take her? That sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with its population of insects on huge fossils. Will would be happy to conduct them—not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.


I have been making some oil-sketches under him. I hate copying. I must put something of my own in. Naumann has been painting the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a sketch of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his Chariot. I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit him with his excess of meaning. But this time I mean to outdo him in breadth of intention. I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for the tremendous course of the world’s physical history lashing on the harnessed dynasties. In my opinion, that is a good mythical interpretation.


The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much. I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give. Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?


Oh yes, and migrations of races and clearings of forests—and America and the steam-engine. Everything you can imagine!


What a difficult kind of shorthand! It would require all your knowledge to be able to read it.


I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to read it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand these pictures sooner than yours with the very wide meaning,


Don’t speak of my painting before Naumann. He will tell you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!


Is that true?


Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must be belles-lettres. That is wi-ide. My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to ask; but I so seldom see just what I want—the idealistic in the real.


You astonish me greatly, sir, but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel honored. That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one; and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay.


Now if I could lay this by for half an hour and take it up again—come and look, Ladislaw—I think it is perfect so far. Ah—now—if I could but have had more—but you have other engagements—I could not ask it—or even to come again to-morrow.


Oh, let us stay! We have nothing to do to-day except go about, have we? It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible.


I am at your service, sir, in the matter. Having given up the interior of my head to idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work in this way.


You are unspeakably good—now I am happy! Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be unwilling to let me fill up the time by trying to make a slight sketch of her—not, of course, as you see, for that picture—only as a single study.


Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him,


Where shall I put myself?


It is as Santa Clara that I want you to stand—leaning so, with your cheek against your hand—so—looking at that stool, please, so!


Now, sir, if you can oblige me again; I will release the lady-wife.


Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann. Mrs. Casaubon is not to be talked of as if she were a model,


Schön! I will talk of my Aquinas. The head is not a bad type, after all. I dare say the great scholastic himself would have been flattered to have his portrait asked for. Nothing like these starchy doctors for vanity! It was as I thought: he cared much less for her portrait than his own.


He’s a cursed white-blooded pedantic coxcomb,


It is good they go away soon, my dear. They are spoiling your fine temper.


I am so glad you are come. Perhaps you understand all about cameos, and can tell me if these are really good. I wished to have you with us in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon objected: he thought there was not time. He will finish his work to-morrow, and we shall go away in three days. I have been uneasy about these cameos. Pray sit down and look at them.


I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake about these little Homeric bits: they are exquisitely neat. And the color is fine: it will just suit you.


Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion. You saw her with me at Lowick: she is light-haired and very pretty—at least I think so. We were never so long away from each other in our lives before. She is a great pet and never was naughty in her life. I found out before I came away that she wanted me to buy her some cameos, and I should be sorry for them not to be good—after their kind.


You seem not to care about cameos,


No, frankly, I don’t think them a great object in life,


I fear you are a heretic about art generally. How is that? I should have expected you to be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere.


I suppose I am dull about many things. I should like to make life beautiful—I mean everybody’s life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it.


I call that the fanaticism of sympathy. You might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement. If you carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn evil that you might have no advantage over others. The best piety is to enjoy—when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth’s character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight—in art or in anything else. Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom.


Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am never unhappy long together. I am angry and naughty—not like Celia: I have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again. I cannot help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don’t know the reason of—so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness rather than beauty. The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even ridiculous. Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble—something that I might compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so little of the best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so.


Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things want that soil to grow in.


Oh dear. I see it must be very difficult to do anything good. I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they could be put on the wall.


You are too young—it is an anachronism for you to have such thoughts. You talk as if you had never known any youth. It is monstrous—as if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood, like the boy in the legend. You have been brought up in some of those horrible notions that choose the sweetest women to devour—like Minotaurs. And now you will go and be shut up in that stone prison at Lowick: you will be buried alive. It makes me savage to think of it! I would rather never have seen you than think of you with such a prospect.


It is very good of you to be anxious about me. It is because you did not like Lowick yourself: you had set your heart on another kind of life. But Lowick is my chosen home. I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day. Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice that you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak hastily.


What was it? I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract.


I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German—I mean, for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon’s learning he must have before him the same materials as German scholars—has he not?


Not exactly the same materials. He is not an Orientalist, you know. He does not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there.


But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern things; and they are still used. Why should Mr. Casaubon’s not be valuable, like theirs?


That depends on the line of study taken. The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view. Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling a little way after men of the last century—men like Bryant—and correcting their mistakes?—living in a lumber-room and furbishing up broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?


How can you bear to speak so lightly? If it were as you say, what could be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain? I wonder it does not affect you more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has been the labor of his best years.


You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling. But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit. I am not in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon: it would be at best a pensioner’s eulogy.


Pray excuse me. I am aware, as you say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject. Indeed, I am wrong altogether. Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.


I quite agree with you, so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that risk of never attaining a failure. Mr. Casaubon’s generosity has perhaps been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has given me. I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own way—depend on nobody else than myself.


That is fine—I respect that feeling. But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything in the matter except what was most for your welfare.


She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she has married him. I shall not see you again.


Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes. I am so glad we met in Rome. I wanted to know you.


And I have made you angry. I have made you think ill of me.


Oh no. My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not say just what I like. But I hope I am not given to think ill of them. In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself for being so impatient.


Still, you don’t like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to you.


Not at all. I like you very much. And I am quite interested to see what you will do. I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation. If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow—there are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant of. You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and literature, which you know so much of. I wonder what your vocation will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?


That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.


But you leave out the poems. I think they are wanted to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience. But I am sure I could never produce a poem.


You are a poem—and that is to be the best part of a poet—what makes up the poet’s consciousness in his best moods,


I am very glad to hear it. What very kind things you say to me!


I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind—that I could ever be of the slightest service to you. I fear I shall never have the opportunity.


Oh yes. It will come; and I shall remember how well you wish me. I quite hoped that we should be friends when I first saw you—because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon. And there is one thing even now that you can do. Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of that subject—I mean about Mr. Casaubon’s writings—I mean in that kind of way. It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But promise me.


Certainly, I will promise you,


Good-by. I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I think will heighten your opinion of him,


I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I believe. What is that, my love?


He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up his dependence on your generosity. He means soon to go back to England, and work his own way. I thought you would consider that a good sign,


Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would addict himself?


No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your generosity. Of course he will write to you about it. Do you not think better of him for his resolve?


I shall await his communication on the subject,


I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for him was his own welfare. I remembered your goodness in what you said about him when I first saw him at Lowick,


I had a duty towards him. The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated.


Your horses of the Sun,


And first-rate whip Apollo!


Whate’er they be, I’ll eat my head,


But I will beat them hollow.


It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse’s knees? And then, these exchanges, they don’t answer when you have ’cute jockeys to deal with. You’ll be wiser another time, my boy. Good-by,


Fred should turn out and get his living how he could


go on with that.


You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me, Vincy! Why, you never threw your leg across a finer horse than that chestnut, and you gave him for this brute. If you set him cantering, he goes on like twenty sawyers. I never heard but one worse roarer in my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor; he used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to take him, but I said, 'Thank you, Peg, I don’t deal in wind-instruments.' That was what I said. It went the round of the country, that joke did. But, what the hell! the horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of yours.


Why, you said just now his was worse than mine,


I said a lie, then. There wasn’t a penny to choose between ’em. Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours.


I’m quite satisfied with his paces, I know. I say his trot is an uncommonly clean one, eh, Horrock?


The theatre of all my actions is fallen,


Now let us go through that once more, ‘Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea’—tell me again what that means, Ben.


Oh—it means—you must think what you mean. I hate grammar. What’s the use of it?


To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood. Should you like to speak as old Job does?


Yes, it’s funnier. He says, ‘Yo goo’—that’s just as good as ‘You go.’


But he says, ‘A ship’s in the garden,’ instead of ‘a sheep,’ You might think he meant a ship off the sea.


No, you mightn’t, if you weren’t silly. How could a ship off the sea come there?


These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of grammar. That apple-peel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?


I shouldn’t care, I should leave off,


I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben. Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about Cincinnatus.


I know! he was a farmer,


Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let me tell,


You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.


Yes, but before that—that didn’t come first—people wanted him,


Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first. He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my father—couldn’t he, mother?


Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us. Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.


Letty, I am ashamed of you. When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so. Now, Ben.


Well—oh—well—why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and—I can’t tell it just how you told it—but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything—


Dictator, now,


Very well, dictator! But that isn’t a good word: he didn’t tell them to write on slates.


Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that. Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open it.


You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything happened?


I want to speak to Mr. Garth, and to you also,


Caleb will be in again in a few minutes. He is sure not to be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this morning. Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?


But we needn’t go on about Cincinnatus, need we?


No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred.


Come, old boy, give it me,


Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?


Not to-day—another time. I am not riding my own horse.


Shall you see Mary to-day?


Yes, I think so,


Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun.


Enough, enough, Ben! run away,


Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?


One—only one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven. I am not getting a great income now. I am at a low ebb with pupils. But I have saved my little purse for Alfred’s premium: I have ninety-two pounds. He can go to Mr. Hanmer’s now; he is just at the right age. Young gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that. And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer: he wants to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him coming in. We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?


What! Fred, my boy! you are here betimes. Is there anything up at home?—anything the matter?


Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give you a bad opinion of me. I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I can’t keep my word. I can’t find the money to meet the bill after all. I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the hundred and sixty.


Oh, I didn’t tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was for a hundred and sixty pounds. He made sure he could meet it himself.


I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he has refused you.


No, but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use, I should not like to mention Mr. Garth’s name in the matter.


It has come at an unfortunate time. Christmas upon us—I’m rather hard up just now. You see, I have to cut out everything like a tailor with short measure. What can we do, Susan? I shall want every farthing we have in the bank. It’s a hundred and ten pounds, the deuce take it!


I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred’s premium. And I have no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this time. She will advance it.


I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth—ultimately,


Yes, ultimately. But boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed at fifteen.


I was the most in the wrong, Susan. Fred made sure of finding the money. But I’d no business to be fingering bills. I suppose you have looked all round and tried all honest means?


Yes, I have tried everything—I really have. I should have had a hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which I was about to sell. My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going to sell for eighty or more—I meant to go without a horse—but now it has turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the horses too had been at the devil, before I had brought this on you. There’s no one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have always been so kind to me. However, it’s no use saying that. You will always think me a rascal now.


I am disappointed in Fred Vincy. I would not have believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts. I knew he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean as to hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford to lose.


I was a fool, Susan.


That you were. But I should not have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such things from me? It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst off without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging. If I had only known I might have been ready with some better plan.


You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan. I can’t abide your losing the money you’ve scraped together for Alfred.


It is very well that I had scraped it together; and it is you who will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself. You must give up your bad habits. Some men take to drinking, and you have taken to working without pay. You must indulge yourself a little less in that. And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she has.


Poor Mary! Susan. I’m afraid she may be fond of Fred.


Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her in any other than a brotherly way.


Deuce take the bill—I wish it was at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!


Mary. I am a good-for-nothing blackguard.


I should think one of those epithets would do at a time,


I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think me a liar. You will think me dishonest. You will think I didn’t care for you, or your father and mother. You always do make the worst of me, I know.


I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons. But please to tell me at once what you have done. I would rather know the painful truth than imagine it.


I owed money—a hundred and sixty pounds. I asked your father to put his name to a bill. I thought it would not signify to him. I made sure of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could. And now, I have been so unlucky—a horse has turned out badly—I can only pay fifty pounds. And I can’t ask my father for the money: he would not give me a farthing. And my uncle gave me a hundred a little while ago. So what can I do? And now your father has no ready money to spare, and your mother will have to pay away her ninety-two pounds that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too. You see what a—


Oh, poor mother, poor father!


I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world, Mary. You can never forgive me.


What does it matter whether I forgive you? Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to Mr. Hanmer’s? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave you?


Say what you like, Mary. I deserve it all.


I don’t want to say anything, and my anger is of no use.


I do care about your mother’s money going. I wanted to ask you, Mary—don’t you think that Mr. Featherstone—if you were to tell him—tell him, I mean, about apprenticing Alfred—would advance the money?


My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money. Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a hundred pounds. He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents to us. I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use.


I am so miserable, Mary—if you knew how miserable I am, you would be sorry for me.


There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day.


It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things other young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst.


I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish. They are always thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other people may lose.


Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when he meant it. There is not a better man in the world than your father, and yet he got into trouble.


How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred? He never got into trouble by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always thinking of the work he was doing for other people. And he has fared hard, and worked hard to make good everybody’s loss.


And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better; but that is what you never do. However, I’m going. I shall never speak to you about anything again. I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused—that’s all.


Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don’t go yet. Let me tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not seen you for a whole week.


Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think the worst of me—will not give me up altogether.


As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you. As if it were not very painful to me to see you an idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done—how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful? And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,—you might be worth a great deal.


I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you love me.


I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose—just as idle, living in Mrs. Beck’s front parlor—fat and shabby, hoping somebody will invite you to dinner—spending your morning in learning a comic song—oh no! learning a tune on the flute. I shall tell uncle. You must see him for a moment or two.


I want to speak to you, Mary.


I’ve got something to tell you, my dear. No very good news; but then it might be worse.


About money, father? I think I know what it is.


Ay? how can that be? You see, I’ve been a bit of a fool again, and put my name to a bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has got to part with her savings, that’s the worst of it, and even they won’t quite make things even. We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your mother has ninety-two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she thinks that you have some savings.


Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds. I thought you would come, father, so I put it in my bag. See! beautiful white notes and gold.


Well, but how—we only want eighteen—here, put the rest back, child,—but how did you know about it?


Fred told me this morning.


Ah! Did he come on purpose?


Yes, I think so. He was a good deal distressed.


I’m afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary. He means better than he acts, perhaps. But I should think it a pity for any body’s happiness to be wrapped up in him, and so would your mother.


And so should I, father,


I don’t want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you. You see, Mary a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because of me. Well, well, nobody’s perfect, but what I am thinking of is—what it must be for a wife when she’s never sure of her husband, when he hasn’t got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That’s the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven’t been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here.


Don’t fear for me, father. Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will provide for him. You and my mother have taught me too much pride for that.


That’s right—that’s right. Then I am easy. But it’s hard to run away with your earnings, eh child.


Father! Take pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home,


I suppose your father wanted your earnings. He makes but a tight fit, I reckon. You’re of age now; you ought to be saving for yourself.


I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,


If Fred Vincy comes to-morrow, now, don’t you keep him chattering: let him come up to me.


I feel very ill: I think you must send for Wrench.


Oh, nonsense, mother! It’s nothing. I shall soon be all right. I must have taken cold in that nasty damp ride.


Mamma! there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were you I would call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode. They say he cures every one.


very ill usage on the part of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend. Why Mr. Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not for the life of her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher’s when they had the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should. And if anything should happen—


But you must come again—you must go on attending Fred. I can’t have my boy left to anybody who may come or not. I bear nobody ill-will, thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he’d better have let me die—if—if—


I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?


Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate,


I shall drink brandy. He’s an uncommonly unfortunate lad, is Fred. He’d need have some luck by and by to make up for all this—else I don’t know who’d have an eldest son.


Don’t say so, Vincy, if you don’t want him to be taken from me.


It will worret you to death, Lucy; that I can see. However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter. I’m the last man to give in to the cry about new doctors, or new parsons either—whether they’re Bulstrode’s men or not. But Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will.


Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?— To go away, and never to come again! And my boy might have been stretched a corpse!


I’ll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke. To let fever get unawares into a house like this. There are some things that ought to be actionable, and are not so— that’s my opinion.


I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate.


Why, mother, you know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He never heard of Bulstrode before he came here.


That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden. But as to Bulstrode—the report may be true of some other son.


Save my boy. He has always been good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,


I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy. Come down with me and let us talk about the food.


If I can only see my boy strong again, and who knows?—perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry anybody he likes then.


Not if they won’t have me, mother,


Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear,


I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you,


Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that,


I did not say she was as beautiful as you are,


I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer. What a late comer you are! Mamma had given you up a little while ago. How do you find Fred?


As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away—to Stone Court, for example. But your mamma seems to have some objection.


Poor fellow! You will see Fred so changed, we have looked to Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness. What are you laughing at so profanely?


I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest—the engravings or the writing here. Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church: did you ever see such a ‘sugared invention’—as the Elizabethans used to say? Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land.


You are so severe, I am frightened at you,


There are a great many celebrated people writing in the ‘Keepsake,’ at all events. This is the first time I have heard it called silly.


I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth. I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L.


But Sir Walter Scott—I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him,


Oh, I read no literature now. I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life. I used to know Scott’s poems by heart.


I should like to know when you left off, because then I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know.


Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,


On the contrary. It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.


How rash you are! Do you see that you have given offence?


What! is it Mr. Plymdale’s book? I am sorry. I didn’t think about it.


I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here—that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.


Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don’t I listen to her willingly?


All times are good to seek your wedded home Bringing a mutual delight.


Why, true. The calendar hath not an evil day For souls made one by love, and even death Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves While they two clasped each other, and foresaw No life apart.


Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad—how dreadful!


Dodo!


I need not ask how you are, my dear. Rome has agreed with you, I see—happiness, frescos, the antique—that sort of thing. Well, it’s very pleasant to have you back again, and you understand all about art now, eh? But Casaubon is a little pale, I tell him—a little pale, you know. Studying hard in his holidays is carrying it rather too far. I overdid it at one time about topography, ruins, temples—I thought I had a clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come of it. You may go any length in that sort of thing, and nothing may come of it, you know. Nothing to alarm you, my dear. A little English beef and mutton will soon make a difference. It was all very well to look pale, sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you know—we got your letter just in time. But Aquinas, now—he was a little too subtle, wasn’t he? Does anybody read Aquinas?


He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds,


You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?


Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, you know. I leave it all to her.


Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?


It would not suit all—not you, dear, for example,


Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when they are married. She says they get tired to death of each other, and can’t quarrel comfortably, as they would at home. And Lady Chettam says she went to Bath.


Celia! has something happened? Have you really any great news to tell me?


It was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was nobody but me for Sir James to talk to,


I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe,


It was only three days ago. And Lady Chettam is very kind.


And you are very happy?


Yes. We are not going to be married yet. Because every thing is to be got ready. And I don’t want to be married so very soon, because I think it is nice to be engaged. And we shall be married all our lives after.


I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir James is a good, honorable man,


He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell you about them when he comes. Shall you be glad to see him?


Of course I shall. How can you ask me?


Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned,


Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one addressed to me.


Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me? But. I can imagine what he has written to you about.


You can, if you please, read the letter. But I may as well say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence a fatigue.


Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you? You speak to me as if I were something you had to contend against. Wait at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart from yours.


Dorothea, you are hasty,


I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions about my feeling,


We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea. I have neither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate.


Can you lean on me, dear?


Good God! this is just what might have been expected,


I recommend you to send for Lydgate. My mother has called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever. She has had a poor opinion of the physicians since my father’s death.


Poor dear Dodo—how dreadful! It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did like him. And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him—do you think they would?


I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister,


Yes. But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she never will.


She is a noble creature,


Yes. Shall I go to her? Could I help her, do you think?


I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate comes. Only don’t stay long.


In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood. These things, would be to me such relaxation as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.


I confess, amusement is rather an unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people to keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit to be mildly bored rather than to go on working.


Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don’t know a finer game than shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollett—‘Roderick Random,’ ‘Humphry Clinker:’ they are a little broad, but she may read anything now she’s married, you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there’s a droll bit about a postilion’s breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gone through all these things, but they might be rather new to you.


As new as eating thistles, served as a resource to a certain order of minds.


You see. Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a very good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend you to talk to Mrs. Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics.


You will not mind this sombre light. Since you forbade books, the library has been out of the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is he not making progress?


Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is already nearly in his usual state of health.


You do not fear that the illness will return?


Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon. The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon’s account, lest he should in any way strain his nervous power.


I beseech you to speak quite plainly. I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act differently. Sit down,


What you say now justifies my own view. I think it is one’s function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon’s case is precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has had hitherto.


You mean if we are very careful.


Yes—careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application.


He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work,


I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations. With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases in which death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be neglected which might be affected by such an issue.


Help me, pray. Tell me what I can do.


What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, I think.


Oh, that would not do—that would be worse than anything. Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy.


I wish that I could have spared you this pain,


It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth.


I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten Mr. Casaubon himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothing more than that he must not overwork himself, and must observe certain rules. Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorable condition for him.


Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.— And I mind about nothing else—


But what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again to-morrow?


I am honest.


To be sure, I will write, my dear. He’s a very clever young fellow—this young Ladislaw—I dare say will be a rising young man. It’s a good letter—marks his sense of things, you know. However, I will tell him about Casaubon.


Of course she is devoted to her husband. Do you think her very handsome?


She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it,


I suppose it would be unprofessional. But how your practice is spreading! You were called in before to the Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons.


Yes. But I don’t really like attending such people so well as the poor. The cases are more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss and listen more deferentially to nonsense.


Not more than in Middlemarch. And at least you go through wide corridors and have the scent of rose-leaves everywhere.


That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci,


Why do you say ‘poor Rosamond’?


She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness. The mother, you know, had always that levity about her, which makes me anxious for the children.


Well, Harriet, if I am to speak my mind. I must say, anybody would suppose you and Mr. Bulstrode would be delighted with what has happened, for you have done everything to put Mr. Lydgate forward.


Selina, what do you mean?


Not but what I am truly thankful for Ned’s sake. He could certainly better afford to keep such a wife than some people can; but I should wish him to look elsewhere. Still a mother has anxieties, and some young men would take to a bad life in consequence. Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say I was not fond of strangers coming into a town.


I don’t know, Selina. Mr. Bulstrode was a stranger here at one time. Abraham and Moses were strangers in the land, and we are told to entertain strangers. And especially, when they are unexceptionable.


I was not speaking in a religious sense, Harriet. I spoke as a mother.


Selina, I am sure you have never heard me say anything against a niece of mine marrying your son.


Oh, it is pride in Miss Vincy—I am sure it is nothing else. No young man in Middlemarch was good enough for her: I have heard her mother say as much. That is not a Christian spirit, I think. But now, from all I hear, she has found a man as proud as herself.


You don’t mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate?


Is it possible you don’t know, Harriet?


Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never hear any. You see so many people that I don’t see. Your circle is rather different from ours.


Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode’s great favorite—and yours too, I am sure, Harriet! I thought, at one time, you meant him for Kate, when she is a little older.


I don’t believe there can be anything serious at present. My brother would certainly have told me.


Well, people have different ways, but I understand that nobody can see Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate together without taking them to be engaged. However, it is not my business. Shall I put up the pattern of mittens?


You are alone, I see, my dear. I have just heard something about you that has surprised me very much, Rosamond.


What is that, aunt?


I can hardly believe it—that you should be engaged without my knowing it—without your father’s telling me.


I am not engaged, aunt.


How is it that every one says so, then—that it is the town’s talk?


The town’s talk is of very little consequence, I think,


Oh, my dear, be more thoughtful; don’t despise your neighbors so. Remember you are turned twenty-two now, and you will have no fortune: your father, I am sure, will not be able to spare you anything. Mr. Lydgate is very intellectual and clever; I know there is an attraction in that. I like talking to such men myself; and your uncle finds him very useful. But the profession is a poor one here. To be sure, this life is not everything; but it is seldom a medical man has true religious views—there is too much pride of intellect. And you are not fit to marry a poor man.


Mr. Lydgate is not a poor man, aunt. He has very high connections.


He told me himself he was poor.


That is because he is used to people who have a high style of living.


My dear Rosamond, you must not think of living in high style. Then it is really true? You are thinking of Mr. Lydgate—there is some understanding between you, though your father doesn’t know. Be open, my dear Rosamond: Mr. Lydgate has really made you an offer?


Pray excuse me, aunt. I would rather not speak on the subject.


You would not give your heart to a man without a decided prospect, I trust, my dear. And think of the two excellent offers I know of that you have refused!—and one still within your reach, if you will not throw it away. I knew a very great beauty who married badly at last, by doing so. Mr. Ned Plymdale is a nice young man—some might think good-looking; and an only son; and a large business of that kind is better than a profession. Not that marrying is everything. I would have you seek first the kingdom of God. But a girl should keep her heart within her own power.