807. iL Evlbw , Marian^ Wit, and v.-iscloi.i WIT AND WISDOM OF GEORGE ELIOT. WIT AND WISDOM OF GEORGE ELIOT. Q'01 BOSTON : ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S73, by 11 15 K UTS B 11 T II K It S, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. STEREOTYPED IJV JoilN C. KlIliAX, I'J SPUING LAM'., BOSTON. CONTENTS. PAGE. SCEXES FROJI CLERICAL LIFE .... 1 Amos Barton . 3 Mr. Giljirs Lore Story 8 1 Mr. Gilfil 12 -"Mester Ford" 12 Janr-Cs Repentance .13 1 -Mrs. Linnet 2G " Mr. Jerome ....... 2G 3 Mr. Dempster 27 4 Mr. Tryan . 27 ADA:.I BEDE 31 'Adam 53 -Mrs. Poj'scr 01 y Dinah Morris GG 4 Burtle Masscy 70 5 Parson Irwine 7i c Setli Bede 75 7 Lisbeth Bedc 7G 8 Mrs. Irwine 7G 9 Martin I'oyser ...... 77 (iii) IV CONTENTS. PAC.E. THE MILL ox THE FLOSS 81 'Bob.Iakin 107 2 Maggie Tullivcr 10!) 3 Mr. Deane . 112 4 Mr. Tnllivor 112 5 Phillip Wakem 113 6 Lucy Deane 115 7 Stephen Guest 115 SILAS MAIIXEU 119 1 Dolly AYinthrop 128 2 Priseilla Lainineter 12!) 3 Mr. Macey 130 4 Mr. Lainineter 131 5 Godfrey Cass 131 6 Xaucy Lainineter ...... 131 ROMOLA 135 'Xollo 153 2 Bratti 153 3 Machiavelli 15:5 1 Koinola . . . . . . . .154 5 Bardo . . 15i; c Tito 15i; 7 Bernardo ....... 15i'> "Savonarola . . . . . . .157 "L'aparra 15S 10 Cosinio 15!> 11 Monna liriu'ida ...... ]5'. ' Piel.ro ( Vnini ...... Id) 100 CONTENTS. V PAGE. . 1G3 'Felix . 178 2 RufusLyon .... 3 ^\j rs Holt . 184 . 188 4 Denner ..... . 188 5 Mr. Waco .... . 189 6 Mr. Johnson .... . 190 7 Ecv. A. Debarry . 8 Parson Lingon 9 Tommy Trotinsen . 10 Harold Transonic . . 190 . 190 . 190 . 191 "Mottoes . 178 12 Esther Lyon .... . 191 MlDDLKMAKCII .... . 195 'Dorothea .... 243 2 Mrs. Cadwalladcr . . 245 3 Mr. Cadwallader . . 24G 4 Lydgatc . 24G 5 Mr. Fare-brother . . 248 \\'ill Ladislaw . 249 7 Mary Garth .... s Caleb Garth .... o Celia . 249 . 249 . 250 10 Mr. Brooke .... . 251 INDEX 253 SCENES FROM CLERICAL LIFE AMOS BARTON. IN every parting there is an image of death. O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so elose to us, and was the divincst thing God had given us to know! Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish. "What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An un fecundated egg, which the Avaves of time wash away into nonentity. A tallow dip, of the long-eight description, is an ex- cellent thing in the kitchen candlestick, and Betty's nose and eye are not sensitive to the difference be- tween it and the linest wax; it is only when you stick it in the silver candlestick, and introduce it into the (3) 4 A. if os Ji AK Toy. drawiug-rooni, tliat it scorns plebeian, dim, and in- effectual. Alas for the worthy man who, like that candle, gets himself into the wrong place! It is only the very largest souls who will be able to appreciate and pity him who will discern and love sincerity of urposc amid all the bungling feebleness of achieve- ment. Xice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of bro\vn. blue, or irrccn, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbor is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion. At least eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last cen>us are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise ; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures ; their brain-- are cer- tainly not pregnant with genius, and ;!ieir pa-'-ions have not manifested them>elves at all after the fa>hi'>n of a volcano. They arc simply men of complexions more or less muddy, \vho>e conversation i- more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace peo- ple many of them bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right : they have their unspoken Borrows, and their -acivd joy.-: AMOS BARTON. 5 their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first- born, and they have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insig- nificance in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share? Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the ex- perience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. I have all 1113- life had a sympathy for mongrel un- gainly dogs, who are nobody's pets ; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. That, to be sure, is not the way of the world: if it happens to see a fellow of line proportions and aris- tocratic mien, who makes no fautpas, and wins golden opinions from all sorts of men, it straightway picks out for him the loveliest of unmarried women, and says, There would be a proper match! Not at all, say I : let that successful, well-shapeu, discreet and able gentleman put up with something less than the best in the matrimonial department ; and let the sweet woman go to make sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil whose legs are not models, whose etl'orts are often blunders, and who in general gets more kicks than half-pence. G AM ox DM:TOX. What mortal is there of us, who would find his sat- isfaction enhanced by an opporlimity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings. with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbors? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit : alas for us. if we get a few j)inches that empty us of that windy self->ub>i>t- cnce ! The very capacity for good would go out of us. For. tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-hip hanging out, and that lie is tickling people by tin- oddity of his person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry up the spring of his elo- quence. That is a deep and wide >ayinz : that no miracle can be AV rough t without faith without the worker's faith in himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. And the greater part of the worker's faith in himself is made up of the faith that others be- lieve in him. Let me be persuaded that my neighbor Jenkins con- siders me a blockhead, and I shall never >liine in coii- vcr.-ation with him any more. Let me discover that the lovely Plujebe thinks my squint intolerable, and I shall never be able to lix her blandly with my di>cii- gagi'd eye again. Thank heaven, then, that a little illu>i<>n i- left to us, to enable us to be useful and agreeable that we don't know exactly what our friend-^ think of us that the world is not made of lookinir-ula-s. to >ho\v us just the figure we are making, and just what is going <>n oehiud our backs! 13 v the help of dear friendly illu- AMOS BARTON. 7 siou, we are able to dream that we are charming arid our faces wear a becoming air of self-possession; we are able to dream that other men admire our tal- ents and our benignity is undisturbed ; we are able to dream that we are doing much good and we do a little. END OP "AMOS BARTON.' MR. GILFIL'S LOVE-STORY. IT is \vith men as with trees : if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wouiuls will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature ju.-t when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial erring life which we visii with our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose be>t limb is withered. Alas, alas! we poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bur>ting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-a>hc-s. we know that all that early fulness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man. or a wizened old woman, but I see al-o. with my mind's eye, that l'a>t of which they are the i-hruuken rem- nant, and the unfinished romance of ro-y cheek's ;uid bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble. interest and (8) arn. GTLFIUS LOVE-STORY. 9 significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives over- turned and thrust out of sight. liich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early sorrow, strangely diil'erent as they seem from the scanty white hairs, the apathetic content, and the un- cxpectant quiescence of old age, are but part of the same life's journey; as the bright Italian plains, with the sweet Addio of their beckoning maidens, are part of the same day's travel that brings us to the other side of the mountain, between the sombre rocky walls and among the guttural voices of the Valais. The inexorable ticking of the clock is like the throb of pain to sensations made keen by a sickening fear. And so it is with the great clockwork of nature. Daisies and buttercups give way to the brown waving grasses, tinged with the warm red sorrel; the waving grasses are swept away, and the meadows lie like emeralds set in the bushy hedgerows: the tawny- tipped corn begins to bow with the weight of the full ear; the reapers are bending amongst it, and it soon stands in sheaves; then, preseiiily the patches of yellow stubble lie side by side with streaks of dark- red earth, which the plough is turning- up hi prepara- tion for the new-thrashed seed. And this passage from beauty to beauty, which to the happy is like the flow of a melody, measures for many a human heart 10 MR. OIL FUSS LOVE-STORY. the approach of foreseen anguish seems hurrying on the moment when the shadow of dread will be fol- lowed up by the reality of despair. All earthly things have their lull: even on nights when the most unappeasable wind is raging, there will be a moment of stillness before it, crashes among the boughs again, and storms against the windows, and howls like a thousand lost demons through the key- holes. A mother dreads no memories those shadows have all melted away in the dawn of Baby's smile. Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: whim passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide. In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee. The delicate-tendrilled plant must have something to cling to. Human longings are perversely obstinate: and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. JfX. G1LFWS LOVE-STORY. \\ To minds on the Shepperton level it is repetition, not novelty, that produces the strongest effect; and phrases, like tunes, arc a long time making themselves at home in the brain. " Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil"; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. Animals arc such agreeable friends they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. There are few of us that arc not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright- winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us. It is a wonderful moment, the first time we stand by one who has fainted, and witness the fresh birth of consciousness spreading itself over the blank features, like the rising sunlight on the alpine summits that lay ghastly and dead under the leaden twilight. A slight shudder, and the frost-bound eyes recover their liquid light; for an instant they show the inward semi-con- sciousness of an infant's; then, with a little start, they open wider and begin to look ; the present is visible, but only as a strange writing, and the interpreter Memory is not yet there. 12 MK. G1LFIVS LOVE-STORY. We have all our secret sins; and if we knew our- selves, we should not judge each other harshly. 1 Our thoughts are often worse than we arc, just us they arc often bettor than we are. And God sees us as we arc altogether, not in separate fee-lings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. Wo arc always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don't see each other's whole nature. 1 Wo can hardly learn humility and tenderness enough except by suffering. 1 Th' yoong men noo-a-dcys, Iho'rc poor squashy things the' lookc well anoof, but the' wooii't wear, the' woon't wear. 1 EXD OF "MK. GILTIL'S LOVE-STORY." JAXET'S REPENTANCE. TIIK golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. Always there is seed being sown silently and un- seen, and everywhere there come sweet ilowers with- out our foresight or labor. We reap what we sow, but Nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit that spring from no planting of ours. In the man whoso childood has known caresses there is ahvays a iibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere and loving human soul, which will do more to dissi- pate prejudice and kindle charity than the most elab- orate arguments. The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity- 14 JANET'S REPENTANCE. There is an unspeakable blending of sadness and sweetness in the smile of a lace sharpened and paled by slow consumption. Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night. There arc moments when by some strange impulse we contradict our past selves fatal moments, when a fit of passion, like a lava stream, lays low the work of half our lives. Our habitual life is like a wall hung with pictures, which has been shone on by the suns of many years ; take one of the pictures away, and it leaves a definite blank space, to which our eyes can never turn without a sensation of discomfort. Xay. the involuntary loss of any familiar object almost: always brings a chill as from an evil omen; it seems to be the first finger- shadow of advancing death. In those di.-tant days, as in all other times and places where the mental atnio>phere is chaniiini;, and men arc inhaling the stimulus of ne\v ideas, folly ofieii mistook itself for wisdom, ignorance gave itself airs of knowledge, and scllWnicss, turning its eyes up- ward, called itself religion. Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, JANET'S REPENTANCE. 15 oucc set afloat in the world, are taken up l~>y all sorts of instruments, some of them wofully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable. Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution : a self-obtrusive, over-hasty reformer complacently disclaiming all merit, while his friends call him a martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous to the fleshly mind. The strong emotions from which the life of a human being receives a new bias, win their victory as the sea wins his : though their advance may be sure, they will often, after a mightier wave than usual, seem to roll back so far as to lose all the ground they had made. Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal statm'e, like the gods ; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch. What scene was ever commonplace in the descend- ing sunlight, when color has awakened from its noon- day sleep, and the long shadows awe us like a disclosed presence? Above all, what scene is commonplace to the eye that is filled with serene gladness, and bright- ens all things with its own joy? "When we are suddenly released from an acute ab- 1C JANET'S REPENTANCE. sorbing bodily pain, our heart and senses leap out in new freedom: we think even the noise of streets har- monious, and are ready to hug Uie tradesman who is wrapping up our change. It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too as if it. were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toil>ome steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey. The first condition of human goodness is somethini to love; the second, something to reverence. The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart : and i:i our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have no tie but our common nal tire, seems nearer to u> i han mother, brother, or friend. Our iliily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each oilier behind a screen of trivial words and deed<. and tho^e \\\\"> Hi with us at the same hearth are ol'ien the I'.'.rlheM oil' from the deep human soul v/iihiu us, full of un.-^ioken evil and unacted good. JANET'S REPENTANCE. 17 Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not decluciblc by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasscled flower. Ideas arc often poor ghosts ; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them ; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes thcj' are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, tlicj' touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us Avith sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow- man is that which enables us to feel Avith him which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analysis of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and work, the life- and-death struggles of separate human beings. Do not philosophic doctors tell us that we are unable to discern so much as a tree, except by an un- conscious cunning which combines many past and separate sensations : that no one sense is independent 2 18 JAXKT'S HEPKXTAXCE. of another, so that in Hie dark wo can hardly lasto a, fricasee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, and tlie most intelligent hoy, if accoiimiodatcil witli Haws or hoofs, instead of fi Hirers, would be likely to remain on the lowest form? It' so. it is easy to understand that our discernment of men's motives must depend on the completeness of the elements we can bring from our own susceptibility and our own experience. See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty judg- ment, that your own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve, unless yon have the delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve filaments, which elude scientific lenses, and lose themselves in the invisible world of human sensations. Those stirrings of the more kindly, health}- sap of human feeling, by which goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slight- est chance on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year-old on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and nmiiin: in moments of trouble, when death visits our roof, or illness makes us de- pendent on the tending hand of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood at her knee with our lirst picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from school. The strongest heart will faint sometimes under the feeling that enemies are bitter, and that friends only JANET'S REPENTANCE. 19 know half its sorrows. The most resolute soul will now and then cast back a yearning look in treading the rough mountain-path, away from the greensward and laughing voices of the valley. The daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else. In the night it presses on our imagination the forms it takes are false, fitful, ex- aggerated : in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of definite measurable reality. The man who looks with ghastly horror on all his property aflame in the dead of night, has not half the sense of destitution he will have in the morning, when lie walks over the ruins lying blackened in the pitiless sunshine. It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that rc- penteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance." And certain ingenious philos- ophers of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of another that has "learned pity through suffering" is likely to find very imperfect satisfaction in the "balance of happiness," "doctrine of compensations," and other short and easj r methods of obtaining thorough com- placency in the presence of pain ; and for such a heart that saying will not be altogether dark. The emo- tions, I have observed, are but slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations : the mother, when her 20 JANET'S REPENTANCE. sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the world at the same time arc doing well, and are likely to live; and if you stood beside that mother if you knew her pang and shared it it is probable yon would be equally unable to sec a ground of complacency in statistics. Doubtless a complacency rot in:: on that basis is highly rational; but emotion. I fear, is obstinately irrational : it insists on caring for individuals; it abso- lutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose than that abstractions may be drawn from them abstractions that may rise from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savor of a sacriiice in the nostrils of philosophers, and of a philosophic Deity. And so it comes to pass that for the man who knows sympathy because he has known sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant .--in- ner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine jn>t, lias a meaning which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells him, that for angels too there JANET'S REPENTANCE. 21 is a transcendent value in human pain, which refuses to be settled by equations ; that the eyes of angels too are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to bend with yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tre- mendous a shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety- nine. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophies are at one: here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt, the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse theory : here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued win.' re a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As wo 2 2 JA -\7; T'S A' KPEXTA XCE. bend over the sick-bed, ;ill tlic forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of onr quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind. The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. Xo man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience : a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, lias been introduced into his nature; lie is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses. The blessed "work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men : and I should imagine that neith'T Luther nor John Ilunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what i- exalted, and does noth- ing but what is graceful. The real heroes. u f Clod's making, are quite dill'erent: they have their natural heritage of love and conscience which they drew in with their mother's milk; they know one or two of JAXRT'S REPEXTAXCE. 23 those deep spiritual truths which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their o\vn sor- rows; they have earned faith and strength so far as they have done genuine work; but the rest is dry barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay. Their insight is blended with mere opinion ; their sympathy is perhaps confined in narrow conduits of doctrine, instead of flowing forth with the freedom of a stream that blesses every weed in its course; obstinacy or self-assertion Avill often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self-sac- rifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism. Convenience, that admirable branch system from the main line of self-interest, makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse resolutions. It is probable (hat no speculative or theological hatred would be ultimately strong enough to resist the persuasive power of con- venience : that a latitudinarian baker, whose bread was honorably free from alum, would command the custom of any dyspeptic Puseyite ; that an Arminian with the toothache would prefer a skilful Calvinistic dentist to a bungler stanch against the doctrines of Election and Final Perseverance, who would be likely to break the tooth in his head; and that a Plymouth Brother, who had a well-furnished grocery shop in a favorable vicinage, would occasionally have the pleas- ure of furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox fam- ilies that found themselves unexpectedly "out of" these indispensable commodities. 24 JANET'S REPENTANCE. The drowning man, urged by tlic supreme agony, lives in :in instant through all his happy and unhappy past: when the dark Hood has fallen like a curtain, memory, in a single moment, sees the drama acted over again. And even in those earlier crises, which a/e but types of death when we are cut oil' abruptly from the life we have known, when we can no longer expect to-morrow to resemble yesterday, and lind our- selves by some sudden shock on the confines of the unknown there is often the same sort of lightning- flash through the dark and unfrequented chambers of memory. In this artificial life of ours, it is not often we sec a human face with all a heart's agony in it, uncontrolled by self-consciousness ; when we do see it, it startles us as if we had suddenly waked into the real world of which this every-day one is but a puppet-show copy. Janet had that enduring beauty which belongs to pure majestic outline and depth of tint. Sorrow and neglect leave their traces on such beauty, but it thrills us to the last, like a glorious Greek temple, which, for all the loss it has suli'ered from time and barbarous hands, has gained a solemn history, and (ills our imag- ination the more because it is incomplete to the sense. There are unseen elements which often frustrate our wisest calculat ions which raise up the sullercr from the edge of the grave, contradicting the prophecies of the clear-sighted physician, and fulfilling the blind JANET'S REPENTANCE. 25 clinging hopes of affection ; such unseen elements Mr. Tryan called the Divine Will, and lilled up the margin of ignorance which surrounds all our knowledge with the feelings of trust and resignation. Perhaps the pro- fouudest philosophy could hardly lill it up better. History, we know, is apt to repeat herself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. From the time of Xerxes down- wards, we have seen generals playing the braggadocio at the outset of their campaigns, and conquering the enemy with the greatest ease in after-dinner speeches. But events are apt to be in disgusting discrepancy with the anticipations of the most ingenious tacticians; the diiliculties of the expedition are ridiculously at variance with able calculations; the enemy has the impudence not to fall into confusion, as had been reasonably ex- pected of him ; the mind of the gallant general begins to be distracted by news of intrigues against him at home, and notwithstanding the handsome compliments he paid to Providence as his undoubted patron before setting out, there seems every probability that the Te Dcums will be all on the other side. Heaven knows what would become of our sociality if we never visited people we speak ill of: we should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude. Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means one feels they arc taking quite a liberty in going astray ; whereas people of fortune may naturally iu.- 2G JAXET'S REPEXTAXCE. dulge in a few delinquencies. "They've got the money for it," as the girl said of liev mistress who had made herself ill with pickled salmon. Hatred is like fire it makes even light rubbish deadly. I've nothing to say again' her piety, my dear; but I know very well I shouldn't like her to cook my victual. When a man comes in hungry an' tired, piety won't feed him, I reckon. Hard carrots 'nil lie heavy on his stomach, piety or no piety. I called in one day when she was dishin' np Mr. Tryan's dinner, an' I could see the potatoes was as watery as watery. It's right enough to be f-peritial I'm no enemy to that; but I like my potatoes mealy. I don't see as anybody 'nil go to heaven the sooner for not digestin' their dinner providin' they don't die sooner, as mayhap Mr. Tryan will, poor dear man. 1 I'd reiher given ti'ii shillin' an' help a man to stand on his o\vn legs, nor pay hah'-a-cr<>\vn lo buy him a parish crutch; ii's the ruina'ion on him if he once goes to the parish. I've see'd many a lime, il'ymi help a man wi' a present in a neeborly way, it sweetens his blood he thinks it kind on you; but the parish shillins turn it sour he niver thinks 'em enough. 2 JAXET'S REPEXTAyCE. 27 Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hum I of Gad alone,- inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck : can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-pas- senger swallowed by the waves? 4 As long as we set up our own will and our own wis- dom against God's, we make that wall between us and his love which I have spoken of just now. But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely at his feet, we have enonu'li light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier w'io hears nothing of the councils that de- termine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command which he must himself obey. 4 My mind showed me it was just such as I the help- less who feel themselves helpless that God specially invites to come to him, and offers all the riches of his salvation : not forgiveness only; forgiveness would be worth little if it left us under the powers of our evil passions; but strength that strength which enables us to conquer sin. 4 END OF " JAXKT'S UEI-EXTAXCE." ADAM BEDE. (29) ADAM BEDE. "WHAT greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sor- row, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? That adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself, is hardii" distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so? whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vis! as, or (.'aim majestic statues, or Beetho- ven symphonies, all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathom- able, ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in ils keenest moment passes from expression inlo silence, our iove at its highest. Hood rushes beyond ils object, and loses ilseli'in the sense oi'divine mystery. Js it any wcakne.-^, pr;:y, to l;r wrought 0:1 by ex- quisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies search- ing the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and 32 ADAJf BEDE. binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration : melt ing you in one moment with r.il the tenderness, all the love that has been scat- tered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage' or resignation all the hard- learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your jm^ent sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music : what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one wo- man's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them : it is more than a woman's love that moves us in a wo- man's eyes it seems to be a far-oil' mighty love that lias come near to us, and made speech for itself there ; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by some- thing more than their prettiness by their close kin- ship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this im)v.rsnn'il expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue l'>r a long time to come, iu spite of mental philosophers, ADAM BEDE. 33 who are ready with Ihe best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind. The first sense of mutual love excludes other feel- ings ; it will have the soul all to itself. How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, .so few about our later love? Are their fir^t poems their best? or arc not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger ex- perience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flute-like voice has its own spring charm ; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music. Our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as elec- tricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence. The man who awakes the wondering tremulous pas- sion of a young girl alwa}'S thinks her affectionate. We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child \vho plays at solitary hide-and-seek ; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the 3 moral deficiencies hidden under tlie " d'-ar deerii" <>f beauty. There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the >heepi>h ; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of ki! tens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies ju>t beginning to toddle and to engage in con.-cious mischief a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the Male, of mind into which it throws YOU. Men's muscles move better when their souls are making merry music. So much of our early ghulne>> vanishes utterly from our memory : we can never ivcall tin; joy with whieh we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode 0:1 our father's back in childhood: iloubtle: wrought u;> into our nature, as i!r- >u::'iu']r. of !):::- past mornings is wrought up in the soft me;! )\v:.;_ of the apricot ; but it is gone forever from our i.::ag- imition, and we can only /<://<. fe in the joy of childhood. ADAH BEDE. 3o But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odor breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is u memory that gives a more ex- quisite touch to tenderness, that i'eeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our sub- tlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us. All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form ! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, wo- men, and children in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proporiion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Taint us an angel, if you can, with a lloat- ing violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her n;i!d face, up'.vard and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but. do not impose on us any rostlit'iic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn, hands, 36 ADAM BEDE. those heavy clowns taking holiday in a diniry pot- house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world those homes witli their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clus- ters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness ! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only lit a world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them ; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving paius of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets iu the world; few sublimely beautiful women ; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities : I want a great deal of those feelings for my cvery-clay fellow-men, especially for the few in the fore- ground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque laz- zaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer, who gets his own bread, and cats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful tint I should have a libre of .-ympnthy connecting me with that vulgar citi/.en who wu_;!is out my sugar in a vilely-assorted cravat and waNtcoat, thaii with the handsomest rascal iu red scarf and green ADA Jf BEDE. 3 7 feathers; more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trail of gentle good- ness in the faulty people- who sit at the same hcurlh with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberliu or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin the longer the claws and the larger the wings, the better: but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggeratcd lion. Examine your words well and you will lind that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings much harder than to say something flue about them which is not the exact truth. It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty- minded people despise. I lind a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world- stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from cloud- borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic war- riors, to an old woman bending over her llower-pot, 38 ADAM LEDE. or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday liccht, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, fulls on her mob-cap. :i::(l just touches the ri:n of her spinning- wheel, and II:T stone ju:z. and all those eliea;) common things which arc the precious necessaries of 1 ;,',.> i<> lier; or I turn to I hat village w ddinc, k;-pt bet\ve( n four brown \vall.s, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance -with a high-shouldered. l)ro;id-i'aced bride, While elderly and middle-a^cd friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and good-will. I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so ranch better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, cuider eye on the dusty .streets and the common green lieuls on the real breathing men and women, who can lie chilled by your iudillerence, or injured by your prej- udice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your uutspoken, brave justice. Human nature is lovable, and the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, iis siibii.ne i:\y-~i <.'i-\--. has been by living a great dral ani.niir p' <>pl m<>iv <>r less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very surprising it' you were to inquire about them in the neighborhoods where they dwelt. Ten to ouc most of the small shopkeepers iu ADAM EEDE. 30 their vicinity saw nothing at all in them. For I have observed this remarkable; coincidence, that the select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enoiurh to command their reverence and love, aro curiously in unison \vitli the narrowest and pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge. the landlord of the Koyal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbor.- in the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the people in his own parish and they were all the peo- ple lie knew in these emphatic words : ' : -\y, sir, I've said it often, and I'll say it again, they're a poor lot i' this parish a poor lot, sir, big and little." I think ho had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish, he mi^ht tind neighbors worthy of him; and indeed lie did subsequently transfer himself to the Saracen's Head, which was doing a thriving business in the back street of a neighboring market-town. But, oddly enough, lie has found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants of Shepperton "a poor lot, sir, big and little, and them as comes for a go o' gin are no better than them as comes for a pint o' twopenny a poor lot." 40 ADAM BEDS. We arc often startled by the severity of milcl people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that, mild people are most liable to be under (lie yoke of tradi- tional impressions. Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words. The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return. If yon feed your young .setter on raw flesh, how can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked par- tridge in after-life? I believe there have been men who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favorite strat- agem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn, sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the (lav is our own. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his char- acter. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason AD AX HE DE. 41 that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen vrii.li that blended common-sense and iVesh untarnished feeling which is the healihy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful -ind ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Ktirope ad- justs iiself to u fait accompli, and so does an individual character, until the placid adjustment is disturbed bv a convulsive retribution. The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny wall; ihrough the lields from ''afternoon church," as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder: when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precisi >n always in one place. Leisure is gone gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the pedlers, who brought b.irg.ii::s to i'.u door 0:1 sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you. perhaps, that the great work of th ' sream-enginc i ; to create leisure for mankind. Do no; believe them: li only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. 42 ADAJf BEDE. Even idleness is eager now eager for amusement: prone to excursion-trains, art-mviM'ums, periodical lit- erature. a;ul exciting novels; prone even to scientific thcori/.ing, and cursory peeps through mierosco])rs. Old Leisure was quite u diUercnt personage: lie only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post- time, lie was a contemplative, rather stout, penile- man, of excellent digestion, of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis: happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things them- selves, lie lived chieily in the country, among pleas- ant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs ut noon, when I lie summer pears were falling, lie knew noth- ing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not .ashamed to say so ; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made sqneami>h by doubts and qualms and loi'y aspirations. Life wa> not a task to him. but a sinecure: he linge is gener- ous to you; but at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as possible. "We don't inquire too closely into character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will ADAM BEDE. 47 have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes who, if lie should unfortunately break a man's legs in his rash driving, will bo able to pension him hand- somely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's ex- istence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-l/onx. packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentle- manly epithets about a young man of birth and for- tune ; and ladies, with that line intuition which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, sec at once that he is " nice." The chances are that he will go through life without scandalizing any one ; a sea- worthy vessel that no one would refuse to insure. In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapeii chance; it is as hard, to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them, as to believe that they will die. We do not hear that Memnon's statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, or in response to any other inlluence, divine or human, than certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate iu the least under a touch 43 ~ ADAM LEDE. Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, strirz.U'Kii'j: amid; t the serious, sad des; inies of a human bchiL:, (H'r strange. So are the motions of a little vessel wi'.hont ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. IIo\v pretty it looked wkh ils parti-colored sail in the sunlight, i;;oored in l!ie nmb't bay: ' Let that man bear the lo.-s who loosed it from i's moorings." I]a' t!i it \viil not sa\~c !l," \ - "s-^--l the pretty thr.i'4 that iai::!u have been a la^ In:;' j :v. Sec the dlll'/renco lietween th;.' i::ipres>if)n a man imik'js on yon \vh ! yon walk by his >!d;; in I'amiiiar talk : or look at him in his home, and the liir.r.v he ii):;kc.'s when seen from a 1 >t':y hist u'i-a! level, or even in the eyes of a er'uieai neighbor. w!io ihinl^s e--t only 1)V following ihem away from ihe inai'ket-pla^e, the pla!i'or::i, and tin. 1 p:;lp;'. en! Tim,' \vi'h Ihem in; > their o\\ n homes, hearinu: Ihe voice wi:h \','hieh 1'i'V Kjii'ak to the yomiLC and ::_;< il abon! tli ir own hi'ar'.li- stonc. and wi; n -;:: .r t'i'ir tho'i^li' fill care for llr.' every-i!ay wants of every-day companions, who lake ail ADAM BEDE. 49 their kindness ns a matter of course, find not as a sub- ject for panegyric. It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathiziug observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odors. That is the great advantage of dialogue on horse- back ; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, it' there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bile and liud it possible to go on. There is no despair so absolute as that which comes wi;h the lirst moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. I.isbeth looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was all of a piece with the sad coni'usiou 4 50 ADAM EEDE. of her mind that confusion which belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the 1 poor human soul is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of avast cily, and wakes up in dreary auia/.c- mcnt, not knowing whether it is the growing or the dying da}' not knowing why and whence came this illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too iinds himself desolate in the midst of it. In our times of bitter suffering, there arc almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is be- numbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep. There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in de- spair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence. When our indignation is borne in submissive silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of our anger lias gone into everlasting silence, and we have .-ecu his face for the last time in the meekness of death ! When death, the great llecouciler, has come, it is ADAM BEDE. 51 never our tenderness that we repent of, but our se- verity. What we thought the oldest truth becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives. For when men want to impress us with the effect of a nc\v and wonderfully vivid light, do they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we may measure its intensity by remembering the former dimness? Our dead are never dead to us until we have for- gotten them : they can be injured by us, they can be wounded ; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we be- stow on the smallest relic of their presence. Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the likeness we see it is the like- ness, which makes itself felt the more keenly because something else icas and is not. The mother's j'carning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man. If it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot, must it not also be true that she seems unmindful, 52 AD All EEDE. unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new Mcknos to des- ola: ion as well ;;s new forces to census am! love. There are so many of us. and our lots arc so difi'crent : \vhut Wonder that Nature's mood is often i;i harsh contrast with the groat crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must loam, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made muvh of to be content with little nurture and. caressing, and. help each other the more. Nature has licr lanirunjre. and she is not unvcracious ; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. There arc faces which Nature chanrcs with a mean- ing ami pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations eyes that tell of dec [i love which cl-mbtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with the>e eyes perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing: just as a national lan- guage may be instinct wkh poetry unl'elt by the lips that use it. Family likeness has often a deep sadne>s i:i it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, kai.s us together by bone and muscle, and divid -s us by the subtler wel) of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ADAM BEDE. 53 tics us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our o\vu uttering the thoughts we despise ; we see eyes ah! so like our mothers averted IVom us iu cold alienation ; and our last darling child star- tles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted 1'roni in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage the mechanical in- stinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand galls us, and puts us to shame by his daily errors ; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to sec in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humors and irrational persistence. Perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering, than svhcn the warmth of the sun is just be- ginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. There's such a thing as being over-speri'ial ; we must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an' tli' ariueducs, r.u' th' coal-pit engine's, and ArkwTighL's mills there tit Cromford ; a man must learn stmimr.t beside Gospc.1 to v.U'.kc them thing's, 1 reckon. Bui, t' hear some o' them preachers, youM think as a man must bj (h)i:r; nulling all's lifj but shutting's eyes and looking what's a-going on in- side him. I know a man must have the l;jve o' God 54 * ADA X BEDE. in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what docs the Bible say? \Vhy, it says as God put his spcr- rit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' looking at it: there's the spcrrit o' God in all things and all times week- day as well as Sunday and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the lignring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our head-pieces and our hands as well as with our souls ; and if a man does bits o' jobs out o' working hours builds a oven 1'or's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow istcad o' one, he's doing more good, and he's ju>t as near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning. 1 I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like find- ing names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names, though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. 1 "They that are strong oui^ht to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to plea-c themselves.'' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines by its own light. It's plain enough ymi u'ct into the \\rong road i' this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things ea.-y and pleasant AT) AX BEDE. 55 to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and soul in j'ou, you can't be easy a-mak- ing your own bed an' leaving the rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the yoke-, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak UU3. There's nothing like settling with ourselves as there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no nsc looking on life as if it Avas Treddles'on fair, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do, we .shall tind it different. 1 I like to read about Moses best, in tlf Old Testa- ment, lie carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits: a man must have courage to look at his life so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid bit o' work lasts : if it's only laying a floor clown, somebody's the better for it being done well, besides the mail as does it. 1 I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' (hat way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much. ... I hale to see a man's anus drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in's work. The very grindstone 'uil. go on turning a bit after you loose it. 1 56 ADAM BEDE. A foreman,, if lie's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well us if lie was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it. 1 You can so seldom get hold of a man as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore blinkers like th' horses, and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. 1 If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plain dressed. ... It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. . . . It's like when a man 's singing a good time, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound. 1 It's wonderful how that sound (of the "Harvest Home") goes to one's heart almost like a funeral- bell, for all it tells one o' (he joyfullest time o' the year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I suppose: il's a bit hard to us to think anything 's over and gone in our lives; and there's a parting at, the root of all our joys. 1 It seems to me it's the same with love and happi- ness as with sorrow the more we know of it the. better we can f-'d what oilier people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man ADAM EEVE. 57 has, the better he'll do 's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge. 1 It 'ml be a poor look-out if folks didn't remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no more about old friends than we do about new uus, then. 1 There's no rule so wise but what it's a pity for somebody or other. 1 It's a feeling as gives you a sort o* liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've more trust in another than y' have in yourself. 1 It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies. 1 I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion 's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics, a man maybe able to work problems straight off ill's head as he sits by the Ore and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or a build- ing, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease. 1 "When people's feelings have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favors. 1 I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my 58 ADAM EEDE. thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge : it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible. 1 The best fire doesna flare up the soonest. 1 I won't open the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound. Maybe there 's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker than the eye, and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think they get a sight on 't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to 'em at anything else. Tor my part, I thiuk it's better to see when your perpendicular's true, than to see a jrhost. 1 I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to 't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't. ' There's a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square, and say, '-J)o this and that'll follow," and, " I)u that and this '11 follow." There's things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'niost, so a3 ADAJf BEDE. 59 you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can't bottle up in a " do this " and "do that"; and I'll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you'll flnd. That shows me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it. 1 I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clat- ter about what I could never understand. 1 It takes something else besides 'cutcness to make folks see what '11 be their interest in the long run. It takes somes conscience and belief in right and wrong. 1 I don't remember ever being see-saw, when I'd made my mind up that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I 've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It 's like a bit o' bad workmanship you never see th' end o' the mis- chief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o' better. 1 We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. 1 I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o' 60 ADAM BEDS. making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it : somebody else's good doesn't alter her shame and misery. ' It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right. 1 It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people ; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree. 1 There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work : the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy ; and the best o' working is. it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot. 1 If we're men. and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their wings, and never know their kin when, the}' see 'em, and get a fresh lot every year. 1 ADAM BEDE. 61 There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart. 1 Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies ; they're satisfied wi' looking, no mat- ter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reekon, afore they go to sleep. 2 It's poor work allays settin' the dead above the livin'. "We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon it 'ud be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforehand, istid o' beginnin' when we're gone. It's but little good j r ou'll do a-watcriug the last year's crop. 2 I love Dinah next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house ; for she's like the driven snow : anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow. 2 It's poor eating where the flavor o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter, and trusten to the salt t' hide it. 2 If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. 2 You're mighty fond o' Craig; but, for my part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose to hear him crow. 2 62 ADAM BEDE. Wooden folks had need ha' wooden things t' handle.' There *s times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, some- times, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke.* The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting 's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made oii't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. 2 I know the clanciu's nonsense; but if you stick at everything because it's nonsense, you wonna go far i' this life. When your broth 's ready-made for you, you muu swallow the thickeuin', or else let the broth alone. 2 Some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, because there's summat wrong i' their own inside. 2 It's the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the difference. Some cheeses are made o' skimmed milk and some o' new milk, and it's no matter what you call 'cm, you may tell which is which by the louk and the smell. 2 Folks as have uo mind to be o' use have allavs the ADAM BEDE. 63 luck to be out o' the road when there 's anything to be done. 2 It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, / think : folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em. 2 It's all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but may-happen he'll be a ready-made fool ; and it's no use filling your pocket full o' money if you've got a hole in the corner. It '11 do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own, if you've got a soft to drive you; he'll soon turn you over into the ditch. I allays said I'd never marry a man as had got no brains; for Where's the use of a woman having brains of her own if she's tackled to a geek as everybody's a-laughing at? She might as well dress herself flue to sit back'ards on a donkey. 8 I 'vc had my say out, and I shall be th' easier for 't all my life. There 's no pleasure i' living, if you 're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. 2 The men are mostly so tongue-tied you 're forced partly to guess what they mean, as you do wi' the dumb creaturs. 2 I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there 's no good i' speaking. 2 64 ADAM EEDE. It seems as if them as aren't wanted here arc tli" only folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world. 2 One 'ud think, and hear some folks talk, as the men war 'cute enough to eount the eorns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn- door, then can. Perhaps that 's the reason they can see so little o' this side on 't. 2 Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it. 2 If Old Harry wants any work done, you may be sure he'll lind the means. 1 I'm not dcnyin' the women arc foolish : God Al- mighty made 'em to mutch the men. 2 Hetty 's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall, and spread Us tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dj'iug. 2 I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy, ail' wonder what she 's come after. 2 As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. AS fur as I can see, it's raising victual for oilier folks, and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your chil- dren as you go along. . . . It's more than lloh and blood 'nil bear sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and hardly sleeping a ADAM BEDS. 65 wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or t, wheat may grow green again i' the sheaf and after all, at th end o' the year, it's like as if you'd been cooking a, feast and had got the smell of it for your pains. 2 It's allays the way wi' them meek-faced people ; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as talk to 'em. 2 Wi' them three gclls in the house I'd need have twice the strength, to keep 'em up to their work. It's like having roast-meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one, another's burnin'. 2 There's nothing you can't believe o' them wenches : they'll set the empty kettle o' the fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils. . . . "Told her?" yes, I might spend all the wind i' my body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. 2 I have nothing to say again' Craig, on'y it is a pity he couldua be hatched o'er again, an' hatched differ- ent. 2 I'd sooner ha' brewin' day an' washin' day together than one o' these plcasurin' days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starhf an' not rightly kno win' what you're goin' to do next; and keepiu' 66 ADAM EEDE. your face i' sinilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enouidi. An' you've nothing tosho\v for't when it's done, if it i.sn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree. 2 "\Vc are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. 3 It's good to live only a moment at a time, as I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't for you and me to lay plans; we've nothing to do but to obey and to trust. 3 It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, iu loving obedience. 3 It makes no difference whether we live or die, we are in the presence of God. 3 I think, sir, when God makes his presence felt through us, we are like the burninir bush : Moses ne\er took any heed what sort of Im.-h it was he onlv saw the brightness of the L;>rd. J ADAM SEDE. 67 known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought before me, and I hear their voices ami see them look and move almost plainer than I ever did \vheii they were really with me so as I could touch them. And then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and resting in his love, on their behalf as well as mv own. 3 I've noticed, that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the cattle, there's a strange deadness to the Word, as dill'erent as can bo from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is defeaned with the sounds of wordly toil. I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at case. 3 I've noticed it often among my own people around Snowlield, that the strong, skilful men are often the gentlest to the women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the babies always seem to like the strong arm be>!. :! Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb 68 ADAM BEDS. things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a troubk. to Yin because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words. 3 There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for. 3 We are over-hasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours. 3 God can't bless you while you have one falsehood in. your soul ; his pardoning mercy can't reach you until you open your heart to him, and say, " I have done this great wickedness; God, save me, make me pure from sin." While you cling to one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery after death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my poor, poor Hetty. It is sin that brings dread and darkness and despair: there is light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it oil': God enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength and peace. 3 The trie cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world Unit was what lay heavy o;i his heart -and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we mu.st drink of with him, if wo ADAM BEDE. 69 would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow. 3 Ah, that is a blessed time, isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a little wearied with its work and its labor. Then the inward light shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin, I have beheld and been ready to weep over yea, all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross. For I feel it, I feel it inlinite love is suffering too yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world ; sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it olf. It is not the spirit only that tells me this I see it in the whole work and word of the gospel. Is ihere not pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And is he not one with the Infinite Love itself as our love is one with our sorrow? 3 70 ADAM EEDE. Now, yon see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a fortnight ago ; and I'll tell j'ou what's the reason. You want to learn accounts ; that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three times a week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of doors again, than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em, it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got cheap you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a week, and he'll make you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowl- edge isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you : if you're to know figures, you must turn 'cm over in your own heads, and keep your thoughts fixed on 'cm. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's nothing but what's got number in it even a fool. You may say to yourselves, "I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?" A man that had got Ms heart in learning ligures would make sums for him- self, and work 'em in his head : when he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches by lives, and thru put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; BEDS. 71 and then ask himself how much money he'd get in a day at that rate ; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the short of it is I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad day- light. I'll send no man away because he's stupid : if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with 'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of thinking you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you. 4 TVhy, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman. They go on with the same tiling over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end. Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a question of somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet.* You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well as in ligures. 4 No man can be wise on an empty stomach. 4 72 ADAJf BEDE. As for age, what that's worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. 4 It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient. 4 College mostly makes people like bladders just good for nothing but t' hold the stun" as is poured into 'em. 4 If j'ou trust a man, let him be a bachelor let him be a bachelor. 4 I daresay she's like the rest of the women thinks two and two '11 come to make live, if she cries and bothers enough about it. 4 These poor silly women-things they've not the sense to know it's no use denying what's proved. 4 Ah! the women are quick enough they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a n>an what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself. 4 Mrs. Poyser's a terrible woman! made of needles made of needles. IJut I stick to Martin I shall always stick to Martin. And he likes the needles, God help him! He's a cushion made on purpo>e for 'em. ... I don't say th' apple isu't sound at the core ; ADAM BEDE. 73 but it sets my teeth on edge it sets my teeth on edge. 4 Nonsense ! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house com- fortable. It's a story got up, because the women are there, and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman 'ull bake you a pie every week of her life, and never come to see that the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make your porridge every day for twenty years, and never think of measuring the proportion between the meal and the milk a little more or less, she'll think, doesn't signify : the porridge icill be awk'ard now and then : if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the milk, or it's summat in the water. . . . Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us ! I don't say but lie might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief; though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an oppor- tunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and foxes and wild beasts, are a blessing, when they're only the evils that 74 ADAM BEDE. belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep as clear of a.s he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'cm forever in another hoping to get quit of 'cm forever in another. 4 I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the clay. No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. 8 The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman, and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined beauty has on him, but he feels it. 5 When what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing. 5 A man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach : but he won't make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way. 5 A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature, lie carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action ; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a lew grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom. 5 ADAM BEDS. 75 Consequences are unpitying. Onr deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctua- tions that went before consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to lix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. 5 There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone ; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe : evil spreads as necessarily as disease. 5 It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed, is one that might well make us trem- ble to look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish indulgence, is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish.* It's a deep mystery the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year for her, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for th' asking. I often think of them words, " And Jacob served seven years for 76 ADAM REDE. Rachel; and they scorned to him but a few days for the love he had to her." 6 Thee mustna undcrvally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money can buy a power to keep from sin, and be content with God's will, whatever lie may please to send. 6 Dinah doesnt hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the Society, so as they're lit t' enter the kingdom o' Cod. Eh! well, if the Mcthodies arc fond o' trouble, they're like to thrive: it's a pity they canna ha't all, an' take it away from them as donna like it. 7 One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's out o' taste. 7 Eh, it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when it's broke i' two. 7 "Said?" nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they lind 'em out. 7 Nonsense, child ! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a martin". You'll never pcr.--ii.-nie me that I can't tell what men are by their out-ules. li' 1 don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like AD AIT BEDS. 77 him. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, anymore than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, uow, makes me feel quite ill ; it's like a bad smell. 8 Eh, it's a poor look-out when th' ould foulks docsna like the young ims. 9 It isn't right for old nor young naythcv to make a bargain all o' their own side. What's good for oue 's good all round i' the long run. 9 I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the difference atwceii a crab au' a apple; but they may wait o'er long. 3 I should be loath to leave th' old place, and the par- ish where [ was bred and born, and father afore me. "\Ve should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and nivcr thrive again. 9 EXD OF "ADAM BEDK." THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. (79) THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. JOURNEYING down the Rhone on a summer's clay, you have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in certain parts of its course, telling how the swift river once rose, like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations whose breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, between the effect produced on us by these dismal remnants of common- place houses, which in their best days were but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to our own vulgar era; and the effect produced by those ruins on the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such harmony with the green and rocky steeps, that they seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain-pine : nay, even in the day when they were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been raised by an earth-born race, who had in- herited from their mighty parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance! If those rob- ber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them they were forest boars with tusks, tearing and rend- 82 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. ing, not the ordinary domestic grunter; they repre- sented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering min- strel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners ; a time of adventure and fierce struggle nay. of liv- ing, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave their Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the sacred East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry : they belong to the grand historic life of hu- manity, and raise up for me the vision of an epoch. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life very much of it is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vul- garity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of, were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers. That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism the path of marlyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 83 self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn. Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. We arc not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger. Retribution may come from any voice : the hardest, crudest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it: surely help and pity are rarer things more needful for the righteous to bestow. What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs? We judge others according to results ; how else? not knowing the process by which results are arrived at. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day? The leap of natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, 84 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. that all less immediate motives are likely to be for- gotten till the pain has been escaped from. Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your less conscious purposes. The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice, that the distinc- tion escapes all outward judgments, founded on a mere comparison of actions. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. Milk and mildness are not the best things for keep- ing, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of llaphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong- limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual. Poor relations are undeniably irritating their ex- istence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet, got, wings THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 85 to fly beyond the day and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless. " All, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about bj'-ancl-by," is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. ~\Yc have all of us sobbed so pitcously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall (he poign- ancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of live or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such trac.es have blent them- selves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood ; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling dis- belief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what hap- pened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate pen- etration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? what he felt when his school-fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere will'ulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into de- iiance, und from defiance into sulkiness ; or when his 86 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that " half," although every other boy of his a ire. had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectivcless conception of life that gave the bitter- ness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children. Childhood has no forebodings ; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others ; though we who look on think lightly of such prem- ature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present. Maggie in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed buck, looking from the bed where her father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, ami give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the imvard, that painful collisions come of it. THE MILL ON TUE FLOSS. 87 Poor child ! it was very early for her to know one of those supreme moments in life when all we have hoped or delighted in, all we can dread or endure, falls ;i\vay from our regard us insignificant is lost, like a trivial memory, in that simple, primitive love which knits us to the beings who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness or of anguish. Maggie had that strange dreamy weariness which comes from watching in a sick-room through the chill hours of early twilight and breaking day in which the outside daylight life seems to have no importance, and to l)e a mere margin to the hours in the darkened chamber. Poor child! as she leaned her head against the win- dow-inane, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been the only girl in the civilized world of that day who had come out of her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable strug- gles with no other part of her inherited share in the hard-won treasures of thought, which generations of painful toil have laid up for the race of men, than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false his- tory with much futile information about Saxon and other kings of doubtful example but unhappily quite without that knowledge' of the irreversible laws within an 1 without her, which, governing the habits, becomes morality, and, developing the feelings of submission and dependence, becomes religion : as lonely in her 88 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. trouble as if every other girl besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not for- getful of their own early time, when need was keen and impulse strong. Two hours ago, as Tom was Avalking to St. Ogg's, ho saw the distant future before him, as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles ; he was on the grassy bank, then, and thought tin: shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand hud dwindled into narrowness. Of those two young hearts Tom's suflVred the most unmixed pain, for Maggie, with all her keen suscepti- bility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave breathing-space to her passionate nature. No true boy feels that : ho would rather go and slay the Nemean lion, or perform any round of heroic labors, than endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils over which he can make no con- quest. "While Maggie's life-struggles had lain almost en- tirely within her own soul, one shadowy army lighting another, and the slain shadows forever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grap- pling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests. So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of horses : iu- THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 89 side the crates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world's combat from afar, liiliny their Ionic empty days with memories and fears : outside, the men, in tierce strun'- iile with things divine and human, quenching memory in the stronger li.u'ht of puri)ose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds in the hurrying ardor of action. It is a pathetic si.ujht and a striking example of the complexity introduced inlo the c'liioiions by a liiph state of civili/.alion the sia'lit of a fashionably drest female in iri'ief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to that of a woman in lance buckram sleeves, with sever;il bracelets on each arm. ;;n architectural bonne!, and delicate ribbon-strings what a loi;^ scries of u'rada- tioiis! In the enlightened child of civ 'Hi/at ion the abandonment characteristic of uTief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes hall-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through a door-place. 1 , she miylit crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility pro- duces a composition of. forces by which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. IVrceivin^ that the tears are hurryimj; fast, she unpins her strings and throws them lanmiidly backward a touching !;esl tire, indicative, even in the deepest. ^Inom, of the hope.' in future dry moments when cap-Mrinu's will once moru have a charm. As the tears subside, a little, and with 90 TffE MILL ON THE FLOSS. her head leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. People who live at a distance arc naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do witli them, to inquire fur- ther why Homer calls them " blameless." Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. "We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earlh where the same (lowers come 1 up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny ting"rs a^ we vat lisping to ourselves on the grass the same hips and haws on the autumn hedge-rows the same redbreasts that wo used to call "(iod's birds," because they did 110 harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth THE HILL ON THE FLOSS. 91 that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known? The wood I Avalk in on this mild May-day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the bine sky, the white star-flowers and the blue- eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petallcd blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate iibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird- notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these fur- rowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedge-rows such tiling's as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the Heeling hours of our childhood left behind (hem. Our delight, in the sunshine on the decp- bladed grass to-day, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not, for the sun- shine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those; scenes where we were born, where objects be- came dear to us before we had known the labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an ex- tension of our o\vn personality : we accepted and loved it as we accepted our o\vn sense of existence and our o\vn limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that: fur- niture of our early home might look if it were put, up to auction; an improved taste in upholstery scorns it: 02 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. and is not the striving after something better and but. l (..'r in 01:1' surroundintrs, the trrand characteristic that distinguishes man from tlic bruU or, to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that di>ti;iai;i>lies the ]jriti>h man from tin.' foreign brute? I!;;! heaven knows where that strivin.tr miirht lead u<, if our ali'-c- tions had not a trie]; of twinintr. round tlio-e old in- ferior tilings if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory. One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the confuted leafage of a hcdirc-row bank, as a more trladdenintr sitrht than tlie finest ei-tus or fuchsia spreading itself on Hie softest undulating turf, is an entirely nnjuMifiable pref- erence to a ir.irsery-u'urdener, or to any of those severely retrulated minds who are free from the weak- ness of any attachment that does not rest on a demon- strable superiority of qualities. And there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my pre>ent sensibil- ities to form and color, but the lontr companion of my existence, that wove itself into my j : >ys when joy.s were vivid. TVe are all apt to believe what the world believes about us. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. [)3 conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagin- ation and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others prejudices come us the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt- provoking knowledge which we call truth. Let a prej- udice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught iu through the eye however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation: it is some- thing to assert strongly and bravely, something to lill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right: it is at once a stall" and a baton. Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident. A character at unity with itself that performs what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible is strong bv its very negations. A boy's sheepishness is by no means a sign of over- mastering reverence; and while you are making en- couraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a restive hor>e, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable character. 94 THE MILL OX THE FLOSS. Nature lias the deep cunning which Ifules itself inuler the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, ami all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boy- ish physiognomies that she seems to turn oil' by the gross, she conceals some of her most riirid. inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodiliable characters. The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it : the question whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possi- bility of a renunciation that will carry any ellicacy, and must accept the sway of a passion against which lie had struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master-key that will lit all cases. The cas- uists have become a by-word of reproach ; but their perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are cheeked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual Int. All people of broad, strong sen.-e have an in^tincMve repugnance to the men of maxims, becau-e Mich people early discern that the i:iy~-teriou> complexiiy of our lit',- is not to be e.a iru'-cd by m ;xi..i--. and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of tha'. sort i> lo repress all the divine prompting a;:d inspirations that spring from growing insight ana sympathy. And THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 95 the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in (heir moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, with- out the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, im- partiality without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress. "\Ve perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness. There is nothing more widely misleading than sagac- ity if it happens to get on (he wrong scent; and sa- gacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from disiinct moiives, whh a consciously proposed cud in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game. Plotting covelousness, and deliberate coufriv- unce, in order to compa.-s a sellish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they 9G THE XTLL O.V THE FLOSS. demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow pari.-hioii'Ts to he; guilty of th;-m. It i> ea>y enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble: we can do i; by lax.y acqui- escence and la/.y omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neu- tralized by small extravagancies, by maladroit llat- tt-ries. and clumsily improvised insinuations. W(.- li\'(j from hand to month, most of u^, with a small family of immediate d"sires \ve do li!'U i eNe than ^n;:tc!i a morsel to sati-fy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop. All long-known objects, even a mere window fasten- ing or a particular door-latch, have sounds which are a sort of recognized voice to ns a voice that will thrill and awaken, when it has been used to touch deep-lying libres. So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to sutler for each other's sins, so inevitably d illu- sive is human sull'ering. that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive. 1 no retribution that does not spread beyond i's mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. It was one of those dangerous moments \vhen speech i^ a 1 once sincere and deeep; ivc wh -n feeling, ri-ing high above its average depth, leaves ilood-marks which are never reached again. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 97 The muldlc-a^ed, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely con- templative, should surely be a sort of natural priest- hood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to he the refun'e and rescue of early stumblers and victims of sell-despair. Most of us, at some moment in our yountx lives, Avould have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or nncanonicals, but had to scramble upwards into all the ditliculties of nineteen entirely without such aid. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranyer to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood. It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love this hunger of the heart as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature 1 forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world. lie in 98 THE If ILL ON TUE FLOSS. curves down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the linn softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a i^reat seu'pior two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an ima_re of it for the; Parthenon which moves us still as it elasps loving y the time-worn marble of a headless trunk. Mamie's was sneli an ana as that and it had the warm tints of life. Until every good man is brave-, we must expect to find many good women timid: too timid even to be- lieve in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority. All yielding is attended with a less vivid conscious- ness than resistance ; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence of our own personality by another. Mrs. Tnlliver, as we have seen, was not without in- fluence over her husband. Xo woman is; she can always incline him to do either what, she wishes, or the reverse. There are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for hi- son by sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is, the enjoyment of I he reverend gentleman's undivided neglect; the other is, the endurance of the reverend gentleman's undivided attention. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 99 It is pi'ecisely the proudest and most obstinate men who arc the most liable to shift their position and con- tradict themselves : everything is easier to them than. to face the simple fact that they have been thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her hus- band, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Tulli- ver was an amiable tish of this kind, and. after run- ning her head against the same resist ing medium for thirteen years, would go at it again to-day with uu- d ailed alacrity. Mrs. Tullivcr's monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force ; it might even be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly impartial view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight of feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent peril, Unit an otherwise in- nocent feather could not settle on it without mischief. 100 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. knave to frustrate a weaker. La\v was a sort of cock- fight, in which it was tin- business of injured honesty to get a game-bird will) the best pluck and the .strong- est spurs,. Mr. Tullivcr regarded his parson with dutiful re- spect, as he did everything else belonging to the church-service;; but he considered that church was one tiling and common-sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell hi-ii what common-sense was. Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances, have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they wil. get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr. Tullivcr had apparently been destitute of any corresponding pro- vision, and had slipped oft' to the winds again, from a total absence of hooks. Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are subdued by sickness it seems pos- sible to us to fullil pledges which the old vigor comes back and breaks. There is something st rannvly winning to most women in that oiler of the llrm arm- the h'-Ip is no; wauti-d physically at that moment, but the si ;i^e of hdp I he piv.-ciice of strength ; ha! is out :-!,!; the ::i :;;..! yet l heirs meets a continual want of the imagination. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. ' 101 self occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal towards whom she has otherwise no ill-will. "What then? We admire her care for the parasite. It was Mr. Stelling's favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subse- quent crop. I say nothing against Mr. Stelling's the- ory: if we are to have one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as nny other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Torn Tnlliver as if he had been plied wiih cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing Hie metaphor! Once call the brain an intel- lectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harro\vs seems to settle nothing, ilnt then it is open to some one else to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowl- edge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle ! if you. had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern'' instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with alamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor. that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else? 102 THE MILL Qy THE FLOSS. A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily comes to persuade him-eif that, no other woman would have suited him so well, and does a little daily snap- ping and quarrelling without any sense of alienation. The pride and obstinacy of millers (like Mr. Tulliver), and other insignificant people, whom you pass un- noticinu'ly on the road every day. have their tragedy too; but it is of that unwept, hidden sort, that goes oil from generation to generation, and leaves no record such tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under a lot made Middeu'y hard to them, under the dreariness of a home where Hie morning brings no promise with it. and where the nn- expectant discontent of worn and disappointed parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air, in which all the functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or sudden death that follows on a bruised pasMon, though it may be a death that finds only a pari-h Amend. There are certain animals to which tenacity of POM: ion is a law of life they can never flourish again. af;er a .-in^lc wrench : and there are certain human beings to \\hoin predominance is a, law of life they can only su-fain humiliation >o long as they can n fuse to believe in it, and. in their own conception, predominate .still. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 103 that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out. the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie ! More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. The small old-fashioned book (^Thomas a Kr-mpis'), for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness : while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all tilings as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph not written on velvet, cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all lime a lasting record of human needs and human consolations : the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. The suffering, whether of martyr or victim, which belongs to every historical advance of mankind, is rep- resented in every town, and by hundreds of obscure hearths ; and we need not shrink from this comparison 104 THE MILL OK THE FLOSS. of small Ihinirs with L.Teaf : for does not science tell us tliat its hiL:hc--t striving is auer the ascertainment of a unit y which si in II hi MI! t he sin:: lies; things with the Creates', '{ In natural sc'r !]<". I have understood, tlr-rc is no'ln'mc petty to the mind that lias a laruv vision of relat ions, ami to which every simple object su^ircsis a vast sum of com'ki ms. It is surely the. same with the ob.servation of luiinan life. There is so;nctliinir su^-tainiim' in (lie very agitation that accoinjiaiiics tin; first shocks of trouble, just as au acute pain is often a stinnilii-. and produces an excite- ment which is transient sMvniT.h. It is in ihe slow, changed life that follows in tin. 1 time wln-n sorrow lias become stale, and has no longer an emotive inten- sity that counteracts its pain i:i the time when day follows day in dull unexpcetani sameness, and trial is a dreary routine: k is then th::; despair threaten-- ; it is then that the peremptory hunn'cr of the soul is felt, and eye :u:d ear are strained af.er some unlearneil secret of our existence, which shall yive to endurance the nature of satisfaction. This inalienable habit of saviuir. as an end in iSclf, l)elonL. r ed to Ihe industrious men of business oi' a for- mer u'enerai ion. \\ ho made ilu ir t'or'une^ ^lo\\iy. al- most as the t rackimr of t he fox belongs to the h:irri r it con^iituteil th"i:i a "race." uhich is i : -:iri;. lo-t in these days of rapid m> >i,ey-i:'"; : in:. r . v. '.' n !..\'!-'.,:,e- - comes clo^e on tli- back of want. In o!d-:'a hioned 1 imcs, an independence " was hardly > ' er made wi h- THE JfTLL OX THE FLOSS. 105 out a litle miserliness as a condition, and yon would have found that quality in every provincial district, combined with characters as various as the fruits from which we can extract acid. Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silveiy soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the lenorwill foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. Maggie and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration lias been made, and all its mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicit- ness of an engagement wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered and presented i:i a large bouquet. THE .VI f. L O.\ Til!-: FLOSS. adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a pre- occupied air win n she inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great social power, but it is not the power of love. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come into ollice are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high appreciation and full-blown eulogy: in many respectable families throughout this realm, rel- atives beconiinir creditable meet with a similar cordial- ity oi' recognition, which, in its line freedom from the coercion of any antecedents, sugnv-:ts the hopeful pos- sibility that we may some day without any notice find ourselves in full millennium, with cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no longer show their teeth with any but the blandest intentions. It is always chilling in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all. it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it. and naturally get fond of it. Ugly and deformed people have izreat need of un- usual virtue^, because Iliey are likely to h" e\: ivnr'ly uncomfortable wit hout them: but the theory that un- usual virtue-; >pri!lLT by a direct eoll-equenee nil! of personal di -ad vantage-:, as animal > get i if; !,. -r \vool in severe climate-;, i -- perhap< a little overstrain' d. The temptations of beauty are mudi dwelt upon, but I THE MILL OX THE FLOSS. 107 fancy they only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights arc varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the des peration of hunger. Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us? I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full o' plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn't Mumps to talk to, I should get top-heavy an' tumble in a lit. I suppose it's because I niver went to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother for. [ says, " Von should ha' sent me to school a bit more," I says ' : an' then I could ha' read i' the books like fun, an' kep' my head cool an' empty." 1 1 think the more on 't when Mr. Tom says a thing, because his tongue doesn't overshoot him as mine doc's. Lors! I'm no better nor a tilted bottle, I aren't I can't stop mysen when once I begin. 1 Dr. Ken n was at me to know wlrit T did of a Sun- day, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was npo' (he: travel three parts o' the Sundays an' then I'm so used to behf on my legs, I can't sit so long on end "an' lors. sir," says I, "a packman can do \vi' a small 'lowance o' church: it tastes strong," says I; " there's no call to lav it on thick." 1 Lors! it's a thousand pities such a lady as you 108 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. shouldn't deal with a packman, i'steacl o' goin' into these new-fangled shops, where there's half-a-dozen fine gents wi' their chins propped up w'f a still' stock, a-looking like bottles wi' ornamental stoppers, an' all got to get their dinner out of a bit o' calico : it stan's to reason you must pay three times the price you pay a packman, as is the nat'ral way o' gettin' goods an' pays no rent, an' isn't forced to throttle himself till the lies arc squeezed out on him, whether lie will or no. But lors ! mum, you know what it is better nor I do you can see through them shopmen, I'll be bound. 1 Sec here, now, here's a thing to make a lass's mouth water, an' on'y two shillin' an' why? Why, 'cause there's a bit of a moth-hole i' this plain end. Lors, I think the moths an' the mildew was sent by Prov- idence o' purpose to cheapen the goods a bit for the good-lookin' women as han't got much money. If it hadn't been for the moths, now, every hankicher on 'em 'ud ha' gone to the rich handsome ladies, like' you, mum, at live shillin' apiece not a farthin' less ; but what does the moth do? Why, it nibbles off three shillin' o' the price i' no time, an' then a packman like me can carry 't to the poor lasses as live under tin: dark thack. to make a bit of a blaze for 'em. Lor--, it's as good as a lire, to look at such a Iiankieli/r. 1 Mumps doesn't mind a bit. o' cheaiinir. when it's them skinllint women, as hagirle an' h;mule, an' 'ud like to irct their ilauucl for uolliinir. an' 'ud nivcr ask TUE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 109 theirselves ho\v I got my dinner out on 't. I niver cheat anybody as doesn't want to cheat me, Miss lors, I'm a honest chap, I am ; only I must hev a bit o' sport, an' now I don't go wi' the ferrets, I 'n got 110 varmint to come over but them haggling women. 1 Oh, it is difficult life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that Ave should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings con- tinually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us the ties that have made others dependent on us and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in paradise, and we could always see that one being first towards whom .... I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people o,ught lo belong to each other. But I s-je I feel it is not so now: there are tilings we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I sec one thing quite clearly that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural ; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. 2 I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. 2 "i ou feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in other minds. Elstf 110 THE MILL ON Till-: FLOSS. all pledges mlirht bo broken, when there was no out- ward penalty. There would be no such tiring u.s faith- fulness.'- 2 Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to our- selves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us. 2 If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? ~U r e should have no law but the inclination of the moment. 2 I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to iro on Avithout effort, when I am filled with music. At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight. 2 If we use common words on a Lrreat occasion, they are the more striking, because they are Celt at once to have a particular meanuiir. like old banners, or every- day clothes, liuiiLC up in a sacred place. - It ulwaj*s seemed to me a sort of de\ \-r stupidity THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Ill only to have ouc sort of talent almost like a carrier- pigeon. 2 It is with me as I used to think it would he w ith the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backwards and forwards in that narrow space, that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy. 2 You have no pity : you have no sense of your own imperfection and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard: it is not titling for a mortal for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee. You thank Cod lor nothing but your own virtues you think they arc great enough to win you everything else. You have not even a vision of feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere darknos ! 5 We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another: we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us for the sake of being (rue to all the motives that sanc- tify our lives. I know this belief is hard : it has slip- ped away from me again and again; but I have iVlt that if I let it go forever, I should have \i ) light through the darkness of this life.' 3 Our life is determined for us and it makes the 112 THE MILL 02f THE FLOSS. mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do. 2 I'll tell you how I trot on. It wasn't by getting astride a stick, and thinking it would turn into a horse, if I sat on it long enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too fond of my own back, and I made my master's interest my own. 3 If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself that's where it is. 3 You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy: you've no notion of running afoot before YOU get on horseback. 3 You must remember it isn't only laying hold of a rope you must go on pulling. It's the mistake you Luis make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shop-wenches take, you for tine gentlemen. That wasn't the way / started, young man : when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the heads of the best linns in St. Ogg's. 3 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 113 I want Tom to know figures, and write like print, and see into tilings quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in words as aren't action- able. It's an uncommon line tiling, that is, when you can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it. 4 It's a pity but what Maggie 'd been the lad she'd ha' been a match for the lawyers, she would. It's the wonderf'nl'st thing as I picked the mother because she wasn't o'er 'cute bcin' a good-looking woman too, an' come of a rare family for managing; but I picked her from her sisters o' purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak, like; for I wasn't agoin' to be told the rights o' things by my own fireside. But yon sec when a man's got brains himself, there's no knowing where they'll run to ; an' a pleasant sort o' soft woman may go on breeding you stupid lad.s and 'cute wenches, till it's like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an uncommon puzzliu' thing. 4 It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. 6 A feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. 5 I don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which, they act on us. The greut- 8 114 THE Jf/LL OX THE FLOSS. cst of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child: he couldn't, have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our under- standings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the etl'ect would last, I might be capable of heroisms. 3 Love gives insight, and insight often gives fore- boding. 5 I think of too many things sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and effec- tive faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for classic literature, and medheval literature, and modern literature; I ilutter all ways, ami lly in none. 5 It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are cer- tain things we feel to lie beautiful and good, and we mutt, hunger after them. How can we ever be satis- lied without them until our feelings are deadened? I delight, in fine pictures I long to be able to paint such. I strive and Mrivc, and can't produce what I want. That is pain io me. and always v:ill be pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes." THE JffLL ON THE FLOSS. 115 Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with love: lie would tremble to see it con- fided toother hands; lie would never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for him. 6 You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or muti- lating one's nature. 5 I can't think what witchery it is iu you, Maggie, that makes you look best in shabby clothes ; though you really must have a new dress now. Hut do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the elbows. Js'ow, if /were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite unnotieeable I should be a mere rag. 6 I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says "thank you." It's rather hard upon him that lie must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation don't you think so, Miss Tulliver? 7 11G THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Well, it will not go on much longer, for the bazaar is to take place on Monday week. ' Thank heaven! Kenn himself said Ihe other day, that lie didn't like this plan of making vanity to do the work of charity; but just as the British public is not reasonable enough to bear direct taxation, so St. Oiric's has not <;ot force of motive enough to build and endow schools without calling in the force of folly. 7 END OF "THE MILL OX THE FLOSS." SILAS MARKER (117) SILAS MAENER. Ix old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruc- tion : a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward ; and the hand may be a little child's. The gods of the hearth exist for us still ; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots. That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and followed desire I wonder if it pricked very hard when he set out on the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to the quick when the chase had long been ended, and hope, fold- ing her wings, looked backward and became regret? If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable. 120 SILAS MARXER. Our consciousness rarely registers the bcirinnins: of a jrrowth within us any more than without us: thero Lave been many circulations of the sap before we de- tect the smallest siim of the bud. Favorable Chance, I fancy, is the irod of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these clays iret into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute hon- est work that brings waires. and lie will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his oflicc, and lie will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that lie may pursue tin 1 iren;il- iti'.-s of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the wor.-hip of Messed Chance, which he will believe in as the niiLrhtv en ai<>r of success. The evil principle deprecated in that re- ligion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind. SILAS MAR NEB. 121 To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravellcd thought a state of wan- dering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring : and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoli'eusive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handi- craft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that diflicult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious : honest folks, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not over\vise or clever at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the \veuther; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature. The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great, artist under the false touches that no eye detects but. his own, an.' worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie. 122 SILAS MARXER. habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during Avhich a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he lias worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no clanger, though the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing conception of his own death. Instead of trying to still his fears, Godfrey encour- aged them, wi;h that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likelv to come. Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender thinir. dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading --till more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be master? SILAS MARKER. 123 so much on his mind," is the belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words. Excessive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out from its due share of out- ward activity, and of practical claims on its affections inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless woman, when her lot is narrow. "I can do so little have I done it all well?" is the perpetually recurring thought; and there arc no voices calling her away from that solil- oquy, no peremptory demands to divert energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple. I suppose it is the way with all men and women Avho reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous : under the vague dul- ness of (he gray hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction, seated musingly on a childless hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose return is greeted by young voices seated at the meal where the little heads ri-e one above another like nursery plants, it sees a black care hovering behind every one of them, and i 'links the impulses by which men abandon free- dom, and seek for ties, are surely no'ihiug but a brief madness. That quiet mutual ga/.e of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a 124 SILAS great weariness or a great danger not to be inter- fered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose. Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings. The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of im- personal enjoyment and cousol itiou which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly tilm, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. A plain man, speaking under some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and that arc likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. I suppose one reason why we are seldom alile to comfort our neighbors with our \vonl > i~. that our good-will gets adulterated, in spite of our-rlvc<. before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavor of our own SILAS MARNER. 125 egoism ; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invis- ible nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows arc a real experience, when they are suddenly trans- ported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have per- haps sought this Lethean influence of ex ic, in which the past becomes dreamy because its .symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by re- peating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will help us to understand how the love of accu- mulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. 12G Marner's life had reduced itself to the mere functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men. when they have been cut oil' from faith and love only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. The child was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-ga/.iug calm which makes us older human beings, Avith our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky before a steady Blowing planet, or a full-ilowcred eglantine, or the bending trees over a sileut pathway. The excitement had not passed away : it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the suscepti- bility makes the external stimulus intolerable when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange defmitencss that comes over coarse features from that transient influence. It is as if a new lineiH'ss of ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibra- tions through the heavy mortal dame as if beauty born of murmuring sound" had passed into the face of the listener. SILAS MAENEE. 127 To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is diillcult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection. Strange lingering echoes of the old demon worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent lis- tener among the gray-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difiiculty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadow}' conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from in- flicting harm, is the .shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. "Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat?" I once said to an old laboring man, who was in his last illness, and who had refused all the food his wife had oli'ered him. i; Xo," he answered, "I've never been used to nothing but common victual, and I can't eat that." Experi- ence had bred no fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of appetite. Well, Master Marner, it's uiver too late to turn over 128 SILAS MAR NEE. a new loaf, and if you've niver luul no church, there's no telling tlie good it 'nil do you. Tor 1 feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I've been and heard the prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o' God, as Mr. Mace}- gives ont and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more partic'lar on Sacnunen' Day; and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel as I can put up wi' it, for I've looked for help i' the right quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last: and if we'n done our part, it isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'nil lie worse nor we are, and come short o' Theirn. 1 It allays conies into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the middle o' the night it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I've got for I can't be anyways better nor Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I don't know on ; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' things I don't know on, for it's little as I know that it is. 1 Eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we've got to do is to trusten. Master Marnor to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights SILAS EARNER. 129 bigger nor what we cau know I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so. 1 It's the will o' Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there's some things as I've never felt i' the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by that once, Master Marncr, and it seems as you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there bc.imj a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me. 1 If you can't bring your mind to frighten the child ofl' touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads arc allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help 'em: it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is. 1 It drives me past patience, that way o' the men always wanting and wauling, and never easy with what they've got: they can't sit comfortable iu their chairs when they've neither ache nor pain, but either tlft'y must stick a pipe in their mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be swallowing something strong, though they're forced to make haste before the next meal comes in. 2 O, I know the way o' wives ; they set one on to o loO SILAS MARNER. abuse their husbands, and then tlio} r turn round on one and praise 'em us if they wanted to sell 'em. 2 There's nothing like a dairy if folks want a bit o' worrit to make the days pass. For as for rubbing furniture, when you can once sec your face in a table there's nothing else to look for; but there's always something fresh with the dairy : for even in the depths o' winter there's some pleasure in conquering the butter, and making it come whether or no. 2 There's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being master, to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke', 1 believe. 2 You're right there, Tookey : there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There 'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself. 3 Meanin' goes but. a little way i' most things, for you may mean to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? 3 SILAS MARNER. 131 oft", and all the while the real reason's winking at 'era in the corner, and they niver see 't. 3 Breed is stronger than pasture. 4 Things look dim to old folks : they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be. 4 There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I've been putting oft" and putting off, the trees have been growing it's too late now. 3 Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. 8 EXD OF ''SILAS MA11NER." EOMOLA- (133) EOMOLA. TITE great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed ; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves ami terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history hunger and labor, seed- time and harvest, love and death. Even if, instead of following the dim daybreak, our imagination pauses on a certain historical spot, and awaits the fuller morning, we may see a world-famous city, which lias hardly changed its outline since the days of Columbus, seeming to stand as an almost uu- violated symbol, amidst the flux of human things, to remind us that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from them, as the great mechan- ical principles on which those domes and towers were raised must make a likeness in human building that will be broader and deeper than all possible change. Our deeds arc like children that arc born to us ; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children (135) 136 JiOJfOLA. may be strangled, but deeds never : they have an indestructible life both in and out of our conscious- ness. Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity ; as, on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confes- sion springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity. If the subtle mixture of good and evil prepares suffering for human truth and purity, there is also suffering prepared for the wrong-doer by the same mingled conditions. Necessity does the work of courage. Tito's mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin: that a\ve of the Divine Nemesis which was frit by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is si ill I'd; by the mas* of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong- doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that coward- ROMOLA. 137 ice: it is tlic initial recognition of a moral law re- straining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be, proved to have any sanctity in the absence of fueling. ' It is good," sing the old Eumcuidcs, in JEschyiu^, "that i'ear should sit as the guardian of the so;:!, forcing it into wisdom goc;d that men should carry a threatening shado\v in their hearts under the full sunshine; else, how should they learn to revere the right:' " That guardianship may become needless ; but only when all outward law has become needless only when duly and love have united iu one stream and made a common force. We are so made, almost all of us, thai the false seeming whieh we have thought of wit h painful sin-ink- ing when bef.d'i hand in our solitude 1 it has urgvd itself on us as a necessity, will possess our muscles and move our lips as if nothing but thai were easy when once we have come under the stimulus of expectant eyes and ears. It belongs to every large nature, when it, is not under the r.nmediale power of some strong uiniues- 1 i'liiing emot ion, to suspect itself, and doubt t'n r ' tru'.h of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities be- yond its own horizon. 138 ROXOLA. Eveiy strong feeling makes to itself a conscience of its own has its own piety; just as much as the feel- ing of the son towards the mother, which will some- times survive amid the worst fumes of depravation. While we are still in our youth there can always come, in our early waking, moments when mere pas- sive existence is itself a Lethe, when the exquisitcness of subtle indefinite sensation creates a bliss which is without memory and without desire. Even to the man who presents the most elastic resistance to whatever is unpleasant, there will come moments when the pressure from without is too strong for him, and he must feel the smart and the bruise in spite of himself. A man's own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands. Tito showed no other change from the two months and more that had passed since his first appearance in the weather-stained tunic and hose, than that added radiance of good fortune, which is like the just per- ceptible perfecting of a flower after it has drunk a morning's sunbeams. The feelings that gather fervor from novelty will be of little help towards making the world a home' for dimmed and faded human beintrs; and if there is any love of which they are not widowed, it must be the EOMOLA. 139 love that is rooted in memories and distils perpetually the sweet balms of fidelity and forbearing tenderness. The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality. A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its S} r mpathctic j'outh, as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather : what is she to believe in, if not ill this vision woven from within? Xo one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the- shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. "With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. All who remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some new experience came, that everything else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony. Our relations with our fellow-men are most often determined by coincident currents; the inexcusable word or deed seldom comes until after all'ectiou or 140 no.vof.A. reverence lias been already enfeebled by the strain of repeated excuses. There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She lias lost, her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her I)}'. All minds, except such as arc delivered from doubt by duliu'ss of sensibility, must be subject to a recur- ring conilict where the many-twisted conditions of life have forbidden the fulfilment of a bond. Tor in strict- ness there; is no re-placing of relations: the presence of the new does not nullify the failure and breach of the old. Life has lost its perfection; it has been maimed; and until the wounds are quite scarred, con- science continually casts backward, doubting glances. She who willingly lifts up the veil of her married life has profaned it from a sanctuary into a vulgar place. If energetic belief, pursuing a grand and remote end, is often in danger of becoming a demon-worship, in which the votary h-ts hi< son and daughter pa>s through the lire with a readiness (hat hardly look-, like sacri- fice: tender fellow-feeling for t he nearest has its dan- ger too, and is apt to be timid and sci -piieal towards the larger aims without which life cannot rise into religion. ROJIOLA. 141 It is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday's faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow. There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them au inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation. It is in the nature of all human passion, the lowest as well as the highest, that there is a point at which it ceases to be properly egoistic, and is like a fire kindled within our being to which everything else in us is mere fuel. Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart : it aims at its o\vn completeness. Life never seems so clear and easy us when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self- risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the high- est, prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our own power to attain it. As llomola walked, often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity by the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, towards which the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as the dews that freshen the weedy ground to-day tend to prepare an unseen harvest in the years to come. After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope. To the common run of mankind it has always seemed a proof of mental vigor to find moral questions easy, and judge conduct according to concise alternatives. To have a mind well oiled with that sort of argument which prevents any claim from grasping it. seems emi- nently convenient sometimes; only the oil becomes objectionable when we find it anointing other minds on which we want to establish a hold. As a strong body struggles against fumes with the more violence when they begin to be stilling, a strong soul struggle's against phantasies with all the more alarmed energy when they threaten to govern in the place of thought. ROMOLA. 143 Hard speech between those who have loved is hideous iu the memory, like the sight of greatness and beauty sunk into vice and rags. It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound. A course of action which is in strictness a slowly- prepared outgrowth of the entire character, is yet almost always traceable to a single impression as its point of apparent origin. Unscrupulousness gets rid of much, but not of tooth- ache, or wounded vanity, or the sense of loneliness, against which, as the world at present stands, there is no security but a thoroughly healthy jaw, and a just, loving soul. In the stress and heat of the day, with cheeks burn- ing, with shouts ringing in the cars, who is so blest as to remember the yearnings lie had in the- cool and silent morning, and know that he has not belied them? Tito was at one of those lawless moments which come to us all if we have no guide but desire, and the pathway where desire leads us seems suddenly closed ; he was ready to follow any beckoning that o lie red him an immediate purpose. Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human 1-14 EOHOLA. Tito had an innate love of reticence let us say a talent for i!: which acted as other impulses do, with- out any conscious motive, and. like all people to \vhom concealment is easy, he would now ami then conceal something which had as little the nature oi' ;i secret as the 1'uct that he had seen a lli^ht of crows. When was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? Perfect scheming demands omniscience. Tito felt for the first time, without defining it to him- self, that loving awe in the presence of noble woman- hood, which is perhaps something like the wor.-hip paid of old to a li'reat nature-goddess, who was not all-knowini;, but whose life and power were something deeper and more primordial than knowledge. Perhaps of all sombre paths that on which we 1:0 back, after treading it with a strong resolution, is the one that most severely tests the fervor of renuncia- tion. ROXOLA. 145 blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle- down. Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, us the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have once acted greatly seems a reason why we should always be noble. There is no kind of conscious obedience that is not an advance on lawlessness. A widow at fifty-live whose satisfaction has been largely drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and what she believes others think of it, requires a great fund of imagination to keep her spirits buoyant. In the career of a great public orator who yields himself to the inspiration of tin- moment, that conflict of selii.-h and unselfish emotion which in most men is hidden in the chamber of the soul, is brought into'tcr- rihle evidence; the language of the inner voices is written out in letters of lire. lioinola felt that intensity of life which seems to transcend both grief and joy in which the mind seems to itself akin to elder forces that wrought out existence before the birth of pleasure and pain. This \vas the tangled web that Ko'.nola had in her mind as she sat weary in the darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for 10 1-1 G ROMOLA. her. In those times, as now, (here were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear mes- sages. Such truth as came to them was brought con- fusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision men who believed falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the ar- rest of inaction and death. There was nothing transcendent in Savonarola's face. It was not. beautiful. It was strong- featured, and owed all its refinement to habits of mind and rigid discipline of the body. The source of the impression his glance; produced on Komola was the sense it conveyed to her of interest, in her and care for her apart from any personal feeling. It was the first time she had en- countered a ga/.e in which simple human fellowship expressed itself as a si rongly-felt bond. Such a glance is half the vocation of the priest or spiritual guide of men. ROMOLA. 147 The inspiring consciousness breathed into Eomola by Savonarola's influence that her lot was vitally united with the general lot had exalted even the minor details of obligation into religion. She was marching with a great army; she was feeling the stress of a common life. If victims were needed, and it was uncertain on whom the lot might fall, she would stand ready to answer to her name. She had stood long; she had striven hard to fulfil the bond, but she had seen all the conditions which made the fulfilment possible grad- ually forsaking her. The one effect of her marriage- tie seemed to be the stifling predominance over her of a nature that she despised. All her efforts at union had only made its impossibility more palpable, and the relation had become for her simply a degrading ser- vitude. The law was sacred. Yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It flashed upon her mind that the probk'in before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before Savonarola the problem whore the sacredncsrf of obedience ended, and where the sa- crediuvss of rebellion began. To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul roust dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings light- nings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. Xo soul is desolate as long as there is a human '^eii.g for whom it can feel trust and reverence. Ko.nola's trust in Savonarola was something like a rope sus- pended securely by her path, making her step elastic 148 ROXOLA. while she grasped it; if it were suddenly removed, no firmness of the ground she trod could save her from staggering, or perhaps from falling. Savonarola's nature was one of those in which op- posing tendencies coexist in almost equal strength: the passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite thought, Hoods every idea with emotion and tends towards contemplative ecstacy, alternated in him with a keen perception of outward facts ami a vigorous practical judgment of men and things. It was the habit of Savonarola's mind to conceive great things, and to feel that he was the man to do them. Iniquity should be brought low; the cause of justice, purity, and love should triumph; and it should triumph by his voice, by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless the M-nse of self melted in the sense of the unspeakable, and in that part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, preeminence seemed a nec- essary condition of his life. Perhaps no man has ever had a mighty influence over his fellows without having the innate need to dominate, and this need usually becomes the more im- perious in proportion as the complications of life make Self inseparable from a purpose which is not selfish. ROMOLA. M> Impelled partly by the spiritual necessity Iliat was laid upon him to guide the people, and partly by the prompting of public men who could get no measures carried without his aid, Savonarola was rapidly pass- ing in his daily sermons from the general to the special from telling his hearers that they must post- pone their private passions and interests to the public good, to telling them precisely what sort of govern- ment they must have in order to promote that good from ''Choose whatever is best for all" to "('house the Great Council," and " the Great Council is the will of God." To Savonarola these were as good as identical prop- ositions. The Great Council was the only practicable plan for giving an expression to the public will large enough to counteract the vitiating inlluence of party interests: it was a plan thai, would make honest im- partial public action at least possible. And the purer the government of Florence would become the more secure from the designs of men who saw their own advantage in the moral debasement of their fellows the nearer would the Florentine people approach the character of a pure community, worthy to lead the way in the renovation of the Church and the world. And Fra Girolamo's mind never stopped short of that sublimes) end: the objects towards which h; felt him- self working had always the same moral magnilicence. lie had no private malice he sought no petty gratifi- cation. Even in the last, terrible days, when igno- miny, torture, and the fear of torture', had laid bare tvery hidden weakness of his soul, IIP could say to lf>0 his importunate judges : " Do not wonder if it seems to you that I have told but fe\v things ; for my pur- poses were few and great." The real force of demonstration for Girolumo Savo- narola lay in his own burning indignation at the sight of wrong; in his fervent belief in an Unseen .Justice that would put an end to the wrong, anil in an Unseen Purity to which lying and uncleanness were an abomi- nation. To his ardent, power-loving soul, believing in great ends, and longing to achieve those ends by the exertion of its own strong will, the faith in a supremo and righteous liuler became one with the faith in a speedy divine interposition that would punish and reclaim. The worst drop of bitterness ran never be wrung on to our lips from without : the lowest depth of resig- nation is not to be found in martyrdom; it is only to be found when we have covered our heads in silence and fe.lt, " I am not worthy to be a martyr; the truth shall prosper, but not by me." There is no jot of worthy evidence that from the time of his imprisonment to the supreme moment, Savonarola thought or spoke of himsrlf as a mariyr. The idea of martyrdom had been to him a pas.-ion dividing the dream of the future with the triumph of beholding his work aehievrd. And nmv, in place of both, had come a resignation which lie called by no irlori lying name. ROJWLA. 1")1 But therefore lie may the more fitly be called a martyr by his fellow-men to all time. For power rose against him not because of his sins, but because of his great ness not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double agony: not only the reviling, and the torture, and the death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious achievement into that deep shadow where lie could only say, "I count as nothing: darkness encompasses me : yet the light I saw was the true light." Perhaps, while no preacher ever had a more massiA'e influence than Savonarola, no preacher ever had more heterogeneous materials to work upon. And one secret, of the massive influence lay in the highly mixed character of his preaching. Baldassarre, wrought, into an ecstasy of self-martyring revenge, was only an ex- treme case among the partial and narrow sympathies of! hat audience. In Savonarola's preaching there were strains that appealed to the very finest susceptibil- ities of men's natures, and there were elements that gratilicd low egoism, tickled gossiping curiosity, anil fascinated timorous superstition. His need of per- sonal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical inter- pret at ions of t he Script ures, his enigma) ic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the 1~)2 KOMOT.A. subjection of sellish interests to the general jcood, Avhicli he had in coininon with the 1 greatest of man- kind. JJnt for the mass of his audience all the preg- nancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in liis denunciatory visions, in tin; false cerl itude which c;ave his sermons the interest of a political bulletin: and having once held that audi- ence in his mastery, it was necessary to his nature it was necessary for their "Welfare that he should /,<' i'i the mastery. 'J'he eli'ect was inevitable. Xo man ever strim'u'led to retain power over a mixed multitude without sulfcriiiLr vitiation; his standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight. The mysteries of human character have seldom been presented in a way more lilted to check the judirmenls of facile knowhiLriic-ss than in Girolamo Savonarola; but we can u'ive him a reverence that needs no shut- ting of thu eyes to fact, if we regard his life as a drama in which there were uTeat inward inodilications accom- panying the outward changes. And up to this period, when liis more direct action on political alfairs had only just beicun. it is probable that his imperious need of ascendency had burned undisccrnibly in the .strong llaim; of his x.eal for dod and man. It was the fashion of old. \\hen an ox was led out for sacriiice to .Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots, and j, r ivu the oU'erin^c a false show ol' nnblemishi d white- ness. Let us Him: away the chalk, and boldly say. the vic'im is spotted, but it i- not then-fun.: in vain that hN mi.u'hty heart is laid on the altar of men's highest hopes. R03IOLA. 153 Be not offended, ltd yiovane ; I am but repeating what I hear in my shop: as you may perceive, my eloquence is simply the cream which I skim oil' my clients' talk. Heaven forbid I should fetter 1113- im- partiality by entertaining an opinion. 1 Ah, mind is an enemy to beauty! I myself was thought beautiful by the women at one time when I was in my swaddling-bands. Hut now oime ! I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face- ! J We Florentines have liberal ideas about speech, and consider that an instrument which can Hatter and prom- ise so cleverly as the tongue, must have been paniy made for those purposes ; and that truth is a riddle for eyes and wit to discover, which it were a mere spoil- ing of sport for the tongue to betray. 1 The secret of oratory lies, not in saying new things, but in saying things with a certain power that moves the hearers without which, as old Filelfo has said, your speaker deserves to be called, "non oratorem. sed oratorem." And, according to that test, Fra Girolamo is a great orator. 3 I measure men's dulness by the devices they trust in for deceiving others. 154 ItOJfOLA. Voracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never nourished beyond the \\-;ills. :1 Many of these half-\vay severities are mere hot- headed blundering- The only safe blows to be iu- ilicted on men and parties are the blows that are too heavy to be avenged. 3 If a man incurs odium by sanctioning a severity that is not thorough enough to be liual, lie commits a blunder. 3 Father, it is a great gift of the gods to be born with a hatred and contempt of all injustice and meanness. Yours is u higher lot. never to have lied and truckled, than to have shared honors won bv dishonor. 3 You talk of sub-'an:i:d :;>>!. Tiio! Are fai'hfiil- DCvS, and love, ailil sweet UlMIeflll mem il'ie-. in) UMod? Is it no good that we >h >\i\\ k>.-> : our silent promises on which others build because lliev believe in our love ROXOLA. 155 and trutli? Is it no good that a just life should be justly honored? Or, is it good that we should harden our hearts against all the \vanL.s and hopes of those wiio have depended on us? What good can belong to men \vlio have such souls? To talk cleverly, perhaps, and lind soft couches for themselves, and live and die with their base selves as their best companions. 4 It is only a poor sort of happiness, my Lillo, that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest hap- piness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness oi'len brings so much pain with it, that we can only lell it from pain by ils being what we would choose- before everything else, because our souls sec it is good. There are so many tilings wrong and diili- cult in the world, that no man can be great he can hardly keep himself from wickedness unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. IMy lather had the greatness that belong.-; to integriiy; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was i'ra Girolamo you know why I keep to-morrow sacred; Jtc. had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to rai.->e men to the highest deeds I'.i -y are capabh 1 of. And so, my Lilio, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know 1 he best, tilings (iod lias put wilhin reach of men, you must learn to tix your mind 156 KOJfOLA. on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you \\vre to choose something lower. a;ul make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is dis- agreeable, calamity miirht come just the same; and it would bo calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it. and that may well make a man say. '-It would have been better for me if I had never been born." 4 It is too often the "palma sine pulvere." the pri/.e of glory without the dust of the race, that youuu' ambition covets. But what says the Greek? ' In the m'miing of life, work; in the mid-day, give counsel; in the evening, pray." 5 EOJIOLA. If) 7 You are flying from your debts : the debt of a Flor- entine woman; the debt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has been appointed fur you you are i;x>ing to choose another. But can manor woman choose diuies? Xo more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother. My daughter, you are fieeiny from the presence of God into the wilderness. y You are seeking your own will, my daughter. Y'ou are seeking some i4'ood other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you lind li'ood? It is not ji t'iiim' ul' choice : it is a river that Hows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and llo\vs l*y the path of obedience. 1 say aiiTiin, m;:n cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, ;md choose no! to have the sorrow they briiiL?. But you will p; forth; and what will you lind, my daimliter? Sorrow without duty bitter herbs, and no bread with them. 3 158 KO.VOLA. My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wifV>, you must carry it as a wife. You may say, " I will forsake my husband," but you cannot cease to be a wife. 8 The higher life begins for us. my daughter, when we renounce out' own will to bow before a Divine law. That .seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. 8 The cause of freedom, which is the cause of God's kingdom upon earth, is often most injured by the ene- mies who cany within them the power of certain hu- man virtues. The wickedest man is often not the most insurmountable obstacle to the triumph of irood. Ji'imnln. Take care, father, lest your enemies have some rraxm when the}' say. that in your visions (if win! will fiirt her Cud's kingdom you .-ee only what will sireiiLTihen your own party. ti'tcuii'tml't. And that, is true! The cause of my parly /> the cause- of God's kingdom. Hum"!".. I do not believe ii ! God's kinirdom is something wider else, let me stand out.-ide it with the beinii's i ha! I love. R01WLA. 159 (insurrection) : I say, never do you plan a romor ; you may as well try to lill Arno with buckets. When there's water enough Arno will be full, and that will not be till the torrent is ready. 9 A philosopher is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble. 1 lind it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life. A perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on lips that will lie with a dimpled smile eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth thai no iu1';;i:iy can dull them cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard. 1 " Holy Madonna! It seems as if widows had nothing to do no\v but to buy their coilins and think it a thou- sand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying themselves a liitle when they've got their hands free for the iirst time. 11 1GO KOXOLA. There has been no great people without processions, and the man who thinks himself too wise (o be moved by them to anything but contempt, is like (lie puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by. 12 Xo man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted. - I remember onr Antonio getting bitter about his chiselling and enamelling of these metal tilings, and taking in a fury to painting, because, said he, "the artist who puts his work into gold and silver, puts his brains into the melting-pot. 13 After all the talk of scholars, there are but two sorts of government : one where men show thru 1 teeth at each oilier, and one where men .show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest. 13 To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath. 14 KM) OV " KOMOL.Y." FELIX HOLT. FELIX HOLT. TIIKKK is seldom any wrong-doing which docs not carry along with it some downfall of blindly-climbing hopes, sonic hard entail of suffering, some quickly- satiated desire that survives, with Hie life in death of old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its wofnl progeny some tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised the pity and terror of men ever since (hey began to discern between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are ofidi a mere whisper in the roar of hurrv- ing existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and rai^e no cry of murder; robberies (hat leave man or woman forever beggared of peace- and joy, yet kept secret by (he sull'erer- committed to no sound except I hat, of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human car. (163) IG-i Ft: I. IX IInLT. Fancy what u game at chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or Irss small and cunning: it' you w< re not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a lilile uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuflle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, in dis- gust at your cast I'm ', r ? could wheedle your pawns out of their places ; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you miirht tret checkmate on a sudden. You niiirht be the louirest-headed of deductive reasoner.?, and yet you miirlit be beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagina- tion, and regarded your pas>ionate pieces with con- tempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men wiMi other 1'cilow-men for his instruments. He thinks hiin- si If sagacious, jiei'haps. because he trusts no bond except that of self-intei'<\-t : bin the only self-interest lie c;in s;!:'ely r^'ly on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or govern. Can lie ever be sure of knowing thi>? FELIX HOLT. 1G5 where and how she wills : to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy : it makes us choose what is tlillicult. The man who has failed in the use of some indirect- ness, is helped very little by the fact that his rivals are men to whom that indirectness is a something' human, very far from being alien. There remains this grand distinction, that he lias Jailed, and that the jet of light is thrown eutirelv on his misdoings. Even the flowers and the pure sunshine, and the sweet waters of Paradise would have been spoiled for a young heart, if the bowcred walks had been haunted by an Kve gone gray wiih hitler memories of an Adam who had complained, ' ; The woman . . . she gave me of the tree, and I did eal." And many of us know* how, even in our childhood, some blank, discontented face on the background of our home has marred our summer mornirgs. AVhy was it, when the birds were singing, when the lields were a garden, and when we were clasping another little hand just larger than our own, there was somebody who found it hard to smile? 1GG FELIX HOLT. sinners who cling to each oilier in tlic fiery whirlwind and never recriminate. lUmning :i\v;iy, especial ly "when spoken of as ab- sconding, seems at a distance to oiler a good modern substitute for the right of sanctuary ; but seen clo-ely, it is often found inconvenient and scarcely possible. "\Ve are all of us made more graceful by the inward presence of what we believe to be a generous purpose; our actions move to a hidden music " a melody that's sweetly played in tune." It is only in that freshness of our time (i. c. youth) that the choice is possible which gives unity to life, and makes ihe memory a temple where all relics and all votive offerings, all wor.-hip and all grateful joy, are an unbroken historv sauctilied bv oue religion. Il is terrible I lie keen brighl eye of a wo: 11:111 when it mi- once been lurned \\i:h adiniraii in on wlia! is severi/lv true; bu! tli''ii the severely true rarely comes withiu its range ol'vistou. FELIX HOLT. 167 A woman's lot is made for her by the love she ac- cepts. It comes in so many forms in this life of ours the knowledge that there is something sweetest and no- blest of which we despair, and the sense of something present that solicits us with an immediate and easy indulgence. Human beings in moments of passionate reproach and denunciation, especially when their anger is on their own account, are never so wholly in the right thai the person who has to wince cannot possibly pro- test against some unreasonableness or unfairness iu their outburst. In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be alone, and for some women also. Perhaps some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is this of a deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it. 1G8 FELIX UOLT. A mind in the prasp of a terrible anxiety is not cred- ulous of easy solutions. The one stay that bears up our hopes is sure to appear frail, and if looked at long will seem to totter. In a mind of any nobleness, a lapse into transgres- sion against an object still regarded as supreme, issues in a nc\v and purer devotedne.-s, chastised by humili'y and watched over by a passionate regret. So it was with thai ardent spirit which animated the little body of Kufus Lyon. Once in his life he had been blinded, deafened, hurried alonir by rebellious impulse; he had ironc astray afier liis own desires, and had let the lire die out on the altar: and as the true penitent, hating his self-besotted error, a.-ks from all coming life duty instead of joy, and service in>tcad of ease, M> JtiifuS was perpetually on the watch le>t he >hould over a.Lrain postpone to some private ailed ion a irivat public opportunity which to him was equivalent to a command. FELIX HOLT. 1C9 in order to say or do them. And it has been well be- lieved through many ages that the beginning of com- punction is the beginning of a ne\v life; that tlie niind which sees itself blameless may be called dead in tres- passes in trespasses on the love of others, in tres- passes on their weakness, in trespasses on all those gieiit claims which are the linage of our ovni need. It is in the nature of exasperation gradually to con- centrate itself. The sincere antipathy of a dog towards eats in general, necessarily takes the form of indignant barking at the neighbor's black cat which makes daily trespass; the bark at imagined eats, though a fre- quent exercise of the canine mind, is yet comparatively feeble. It is a fact perhaps kepi a little too much in the back-ground, that mothers have a self larger than tin ir maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and arc gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not lilled with praying for their boys, read- ing old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. 170 FI:I.I.\ HOLT. din'_r exceptions or additions. I'ut what i< s'reimil.. Is it blind wilfiilness tiial sees n > terrors, 1,0 nianv- linked consequences, no lirui--es and wound- of tho^e. whose cords iL tightens? Is it the narrownr-s <<{' ;i brain tliat conceives no needs diilerinu' IVo:;] its i\vn, and lool-:s to no re-nlts lic-yond 'lie bargains if to-day; Hint lim^ v.'ith cinjiluisis fore-very s;n:dl purjio.-e. and thinks it weakness to exercise She .-uMhae power of ro>olved renuuci:i:ionV There is a sort of >tiiijecti'.u Avliich N tlie peculiar heri:;i;rc of largeness and of love ; and strength is of; en only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness. Half the sorrows of women would bo averted if they could repress the speech they know to be u-'-less nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter. Under protracted ill every living creature will lind sonii-tliii!^ thai makes a comparative eaire. FEL IX n()L T. 171 experience of another. We are very much indebted to such a linking of events as makes a doubtful action look wrong. Harold was one of thor cttan yaw fii>ji, says tin.- wise goddess you have not tin 1 best of ii in :.ll things, ( ) you:!ir>trrs ; tin: elderly man has hi> enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in mid-spring or autumn on the. otiNMo of a stage-coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet through a tube, by atmospheric pressure, from Y\" in- ches tor to Newcastle : that is a line result to haver among our hopes; but the slow old-l'a-hi<>ned way of getting from one end of our country to the other is the better thing to have in the memory. The tube- journey can never lend much to picture and narrative; it is as barren as an exclamatory () '. Whereas the happy outside passenger seated on the.- box from the dawn to the gloaming gathered enough stories of English life, enough of English labors, in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, to make episodes for a modern Odyssey. When a woman feels purely and nobly, that ardor of hi-rs which breaks through formula-' too rigorously urged on men by daily practical need-, makt - one of her most preci HIS iniluences ; she i> the added im- pulse that shatters the stiU'ening cru-t of caul ions experience. Her in-pin-d ignorance gives a sublimity to actions .-) incongruously simple, that otherwise they would make men smile. FELIX HOLT. 17.~> The finest threads, sncli as no eye sees, if hound cnnninu'ly about the sensitive llesh, so that the move- ment to break them wotiH bring torture, may make :i Avor.se bondage than any fetters. From the British point of view masculine beauty is regarded very much as it is in the drapery business : as good solely for the fancy department for young noblemen, artists, poets, and the clergy. On the point of knowing when we arc disagreeable, our human nature is fallible. Our lavender-water, our smiles, our compliment:-*, and other polite falsities, are constantly offensive, when in the very nature of tin-in they can only be meant to attract admiration ami regard. All knowledge which alters our lives penetrates us more when it comes in the early morning: (he day tlnit has to be travelled with something new and per- haps forever sad in its light, is an image of the life thai, spreads beyond. But at night the time of rest is near. Blows arc sarcasms turned stupid : wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest. 17G FELIX IIOI.T. very fond of their own persons and lives, are not at all devoted to the Maker tliev believe in. Xatnrc never makes men who are at once energet- ically sympathetic and minutely calculating. Express confessions give definite-ness to memories that might more easilv melt away without them. Questions of origination in stirring periods are no- toriously hard to settle. It is by no means neces- sary in human things that there should be only one begiuuer. To be right in great memorable moments, is perhaps the thing we need most desire for ourselves. "What we call illusions arc 1 often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present, realities a willing move- ment of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life. We >ee human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little niiu'ht as well not have been. .IJut in this way we migh' break up a irreat army into units: in Ihis way we might break ihe sunlight into fragment, and i!ii:,k th:;t this and the other i;;igh; be eiieaply parted \vi;!i. ].'. !i- riither raise a monument to ihe soldi rs wh >-c brave hearts only kept the 1'anks i:;:br<>keii, and met dea:h a monument to tlie fai: hful who were not famous, and who are precious as the eontinuily of the FELIX HOLT. 177 sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall un- seeii and on barrenness. 31. It was but yesterday yon spoke him well You've changed your mind so soon? K XotI 'tis he That, changing to my thought, has changed my mind. No man puts rotten apples in his pouch Because their upper side looks fair to him. Constancy in mistake is constant folly. 11 Oh, sir, 'twas that mixture of spite and OA'cr-fed merriment which passes for humor with the vulgar. In their fun they have much resemblance to a turkey- cock. It has a cruel beak, and a silly iteration of ugly sounds; it spreads its tail in self-glorification, but shows you the wrong side of that ornament liking admiration, but knowing not what is admir- able. 11 It is a good and soothfast saw ; Half roasted never will be raw; Xo dough is dried once more to meal, IS'o crock ncw-shapcn by Ihe wheel; Yon can't turn curds to milk again, Nor Xow, by wishing, back to Then; And having tasted stolen honey, You can't buy innocence for money. 11 Tis grievous, that with all amplification of travel 178 FKI.1X HOLT. both by sea and hind, :i man can never separate him- seli' IVoin his past history. 11 Xo man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill as a just idea of the solar system, or the power of painting' tlesh, or of reading written harmonies can come late and of a sudden: yet many will not stick at believing that happiness can come at any day and hour solely by a new disposition of events ; though there is nought less capable of a magical production than a mortal's happiness, which is mainly a complex of habitual relations mid dispositions not to be wrought by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of Tor- tune's wheel for one on whose brow Time has written legibly." The devil tempts us not 'tis we tempt him, Beckoning his skill wiih opportunity. 11 I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what, is honor- able and what is shameful. . . . llo\v can polit- ical freedom make us better, any more than a religion we don't, believe in, it' people laugh and win!; \\iien Hey see men abuse and delile it ? And while public opinion is whai it is while nu-n have no be! ter beiiel's about public duty while corruption is not fi-li tube a damning disgrace' while men are im! ashamed i:i Parliament and out of it to make public (juoiion.s which concern the welfare of millions a mere screen FELIX HOLT. 17!) for their own petty private ends. I say no fresh scheme, of voting will much mend our condition. Tor. take us working men of all sorts. Suppose out. of every hundred who had a vote there were thirty who had some .soberness, some sense to choose with, some good feeling to make them wish the right thing for all. And suppose there were seventy out of the hundred who were, half of them, not sober, who had no sense to choose one thing in politics more than another, and who had so little good feeling in them that they wasted on their own drinking the money that should have helped to feed and clothe their wives and children; and another half of them who, if they didn't drink, were too ignorant or mean or stupid to see any good for themselves better than pocketing a live-shilling piece when it was offered them. "Where would be the political power of the thirty sober men? The power would lie with the seventy drunken and stupid votes. 1 "Where's the good of pulling at such a tangled skein as this electioneering trickery? As long as three- fourihs of the men in this country sec nothing in an election but sell-interest, and nothing in soil-interest but some form of greed, one might as well try to purify the proceedings of the ll>hes, and say to a hungry cod- ti h -'My good friend, abstain; don't goggle your eyes so, or show such a stupid gluttonous mouth, or think the lit lie fishes are worth nothing except in rela- tion to your own inside." ILe'd be open to no argu- ment short of crimping him. 1 180 FELIX HOLT. This world is not a very fine place for a good many of the people in it. lint I've made up my mind it slia'ii'l be the worse firm-', if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the world that there must lie a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, and it' I don't lie and filch somebody else will. Weil, then, somebody else .shall, for i won't. 1 The fact is, there are not many easy lots to be drawn in the world at present; and such as they are I am not envious of them. I don't >uy life is not worth having : it is worth having to a man who has some sparks of sense and feeling and bravery in him. And the finest fellow of all would be the one who could be glad to have lived because the world was chielly mis- erable, and his life had come to help soric one who needed it. lie would be the man who hail the most powers and the fewest selfish wants. Ikit I'm not up to the level of what I see to be best. 1 I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labor and common burden of the world; but 1 do choose to withdraw my>elf from the push and the scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the pu-h and the sera::.:/!-' in the I;>I:L> r;m. Ii;;t I care for the penpii> who live n<>\v and \\ill not be living when the long-run comes. A> it i>, 1 pre- fer going .shares with the unlucky. 1 Thousands, of men have wedded poverty because they PEL IX II OL T. 181 expect to go to heaven for it; I don't cxpeet to go to heaven lor it, but I wed it because it enables me to do what I most want to do on earth. "Whatever the hopes for the world nun* be whether great or small I am a man of this generation; I will try to make life less bitter for a few within my reaeh. It is held reasonable enough to toil for the fortunes of a family, though it may turn to imbecility in Ihe third genera- tion. I choose a family with more chances in it. 1 It is just because I'm a very ambitious fellow, with very hungry passions, wanting a great deal to satisfy me, that 1 have chosen to give up what people call worldly good. At least that lias been one determining reason. It all depends on what a man gets into his consciousness what life thrusts into his mind, so that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the guilty, or a mechanic;',! problem to an inventive genius. There are two things I've got present in that way : one of them is the picture, of what I should hale to be. I'm determined never to go about making my face sim- pering or solemn, and telling professional lies for proiil ; or to gel (angled in aii'airs where I must wink at. dishonesty and pocket the proceeds, and justify that knavery as part of a system that I can't alter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success, I should want to win I should defend the wrong that I had once identified myself wii.Ii. I should become every! ifmg that I sec now beforehand to be detestable. And what's more, I should do this, as men are doing it every day, for a ridiculously small prize perhaps for FELIX IWLT. I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to tlie purpose he sees to be best. As to ji;>t til;, 1 amount of re.-ult lie may see iVom his particular work that's a tremendous uncertainty : the unive so has not been arranged for (lie. gratification of his feel- ings. As long as a man sees and believes in some great good, he'll prefer working towards that in the way he's best fit for, come what may. I put (. tl'ects at their minimum, but I'd rather have the minimum of c ll'ect. if it'.s of the sort I care for, than the maximum of clfect I don't care for a lot of line thing-; that arc not to my taste and if they were, the conditions of holding l hem while the world is what it is, are such :is Would jar on me like grating metal. 1 I -hould say, teach any truth you can. whether it's in the Testament or out of it. It's little enough any- body can get hold of. and >;ill le-s what he can drive, into the >kulls of a pcnrr-conniiu'_c. parcel-tying gen- eration, such as mostly till your chapels.' FELIX HOLT. 183 A line lady is a squirrel-headed thing-, with small airs, and small notions, about as applicable 1o the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest. 1 I can't bear to see you ^oiny the way of (ho foolish women who spoil men's lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves to the petty desires of petty creatures. Thai's the way those who iniu'hi do better spend their lives for nought i.r<'t cheeked in every ^reat dibit toil with brain and limb for things l.hat have no more to do with a manly life; than tarts and confectionery. That's what makes women a curse : all life is stunted to suit their little- ness. That's while I'll never love, if I can help it; and il' I love, I'll bear it, and never marry. 1 I wonder whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to mea- the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful who made a man's passion for her rush in one current, with all the threat aims of his life. 1 LSI FELIX HOLT. icent activity. That's what your favorite gentlemen do, of the Byronic-bilious style. Extlicr. 1 don't admit that those are my favorite gentlemen. F< li.r. I've heard yon defend ttiem gentlemen like j-our Iicnes, who have no pariieular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the intinire is the right tiling for them. They miu'it as well boast of nausea as a proof of a strong inside. 1 I reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be the very object of law to hinder. ... I hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to tight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in. the beginning. 1 I have had much puerile blame cast upon me, be- cause 1 I have uttered such names as Brougham and "Wellington in the pulpit. V\"hy not "Wellington as well a> Rabshakeh'/ and why not Ilrongham as well as Balaam 1 / Docs God know less of men than lie did in the days of llcx.ekiah and Moses'/ is His arm shortened, and is the world become too wide for His providence'/ '" "And all the people said. Amen." . . . My brethren, do you think that great shout wa^ r;i:-ed in I-rael by each man's waiiing to say "amen" iill his neighbors had said amen'/ Do you think there will ever In: a great shout for the right the shout of a nation as of FELIX HOLT. 185 one man, rounded and whole, like the voice of the archangel that bound together all the listeners of earth and heaven if every Christian of you peeps round to see what his neighbors in good coats are doing, or else puts his hat before his face that he may shout and never be heard? But this is what you do : when the servant of God stands up to deliver his message, do you lay your souls beneath the Word as you set out your plants beneath the falling rain? No; one of you sends his eyes to all corners, he smothers his soul with small questions, " What does brother Y. think?" "Is this doctrine high enough for brother Z. ? " " Will the church members be pleased? " 3 riay not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others, may happen to sear your own fingers, and make them dead to the quality of things. 'Tis difficult enough to sec our way and keep our torch steady in this dim labyrinth : to whirl the torch and daz/le the eyes of our fellow-seekers is a poor daring, and may end in total darkness. 2 Esther. This will not be a grief to you, I hope, father? You think it is better that I should go? Ii'itfus. Xay, child, I am weak. But I would fain be capable of a joy quite apart from the accidents of my aged earthly existence, which, indeed, is a petty and almost dried-up fountain whereas to the recep- tive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is dimin- ished. 2 186 FELIX HOLT. Truly, the uncertainty of things is a text rather loo wide and obvious for fruitful application; and to dis- course of it is, as one may say, to bottle up the air, and make a present of it to those who are already standing out of doors. - The Lord knoweth them that arc His; but we we are left to judge by uncertain signs, that so we may learn to exercise hope and faith towards one another; and in this uncertainty I cling with awful hope to those whom the world loves not because their con- science, albeit mistakenly, is at war with the habits of the world. Our great faith, my Esther, is the faith of martyrs: I will not lightly turn away from any man \vhoendures harshness because he will not lie; nay, though I would not wantonly grasp at ease of mind through an arbitrary choice of doctrine. I cannot but believe that the merits of the Divine Sacriiice are wider than our utmost charity. I once believed other- wise but not now, not now. a I say not that compromise is unnecessary, but it is an evil attendant on our imperfection; and I would pray every one to mark that, where compromise broadens, intellect and conscience are thru>t into nar- rower room.- L'ttlhn: But that must be the best life, father. That must be the best life. linntx. What life, my dear child? L'.it/n:): Why, that where one bears and does every- FELIX HOLT. 187 thing because of some great and strong feeling so that tills and that in one's circumstances don't signify. llufus. Yea, verity : but the feeling that should be thus supreme is devotcdness to the Divine Will. 2 Even as in music, where all obey aud concur to one end, so that each has the joy of contributing to a whole whereby he is ravished and lifted up into the courts of heaven, so will it be in that crowning time of the mil- lennial reign, when our daily prayer will be fulfilled, and one law shall be written on all hearts, and be the very structure of all thought, and be the principle of all action. 2 The very truth hath a color from the disposition of the uttcrer. 3 Whore a great weight has to be moved, we require not so much selected instruments as abundant horse- power. 2 There arc many who have helped to draw the car of Reform, whose ends are but partial, and who forsake not the ungodly principle of selfish alliances, but would only substitute Syria for Egypt thinking chiefly of their own share in peacocks, gold, and ivory. 2 The mind that is too ready at contempt and rcpro- 188 Fl-LIX HOLT. batiou is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and hold ing a light that is precious though it vyere heaven-sent manna. 2 "Tis a great and mysterious gift, this clinging of the heart, my Esther, whereby it hath often seemed to me that even in the very moment of suffering our souls have the keenest foretaste of heaven. I speak not lightly, but as one who hath endured. And 'tis a strange truth that only in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love. 2 As for being saved without works, there's a many, I daresay, can't do without that doctrine; but I thank the Lord I never needed to put ?/;>/self on a level with the thief on the cross. I've done my duty, and more, if anybody comes to that; for I 've gone without my bit of meat to make broth for a sick neighbor: and if there's any of the church members say they've done the same, I'd ask them if they had the sinking at the stomach as I have; for I've ever strove to do the right thing, and more, for good-natured I always was. 3 Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for vou. 3 "When you've been used to doing thing-;, and they've been taken away from you, it's as if your hands had been cut oil', and you IV It the lingers a-> are of no usu to vou. 1 FELIX HOLT. 189 I look upon it, life is like our game at whist, when Banks and his wife conic to the still-room of an even- ing. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it. 4 Why, if I've only got some orange flowers to candy, I shouldn't like to die till I sec them all right. 4 I would change with nobody, madam. And if troubles were put up to market, I 'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst. 4 Well, madam, put a good face on it, and don't seem to be on the look-out for crows, else you'll set other people walching. 4 When I awake at cock-crow, I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be murdered. 4 There's a fine presence about Mr. Harold. I re- member you used to say, madam, there were some people you would always know were in the room though they stood round a corner, and others you might never see till you ran against them. That's as true as truth. 4 If a man's got a bit of property, a stake in the a try, he'll want to keep things square isn't safe, Tom's in danger. 100 FELIX HOLT. If a nag is to throw me, I say let him have some blood. 5 I've seen it again and again. If a man takes to tongue-work it's all over witli him. "Everything's wrong," says he. That's a big text. But does he want to make everything right? Not he. He'd lose his text. " "\Vc want every man's good," say they. "Why, they never knew yet what a man's good is. How should they? It's working for his victual not get- ting a slice of other people's. 5 Putt}' has said to me, " Johnson, bear in mind there are two Avays of speaking an audience will always like : one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the. other is, to tell them what they're used to." I shall never be the man to deny that I owe a great deal to Putty. 6 A man who puts a non-natural strained sense on a promise is no better than a robber. 7 I'm no fool myself: I'm forced to wink a good deal, for fear of seeing too much, for a neighborly man must let himself be cheated a little. 3 None o' your shooting for m< ii's two to one you'll miss. Snaring 's more iKliing-likr. You bait your hook, and if it isna the fishes' good-will to come, lhai's nothing again' the sporting genelinan. And that's what I say bv .snaring. 9 FELIX HOLT. 191 I think half those priggish maxims about human nature in the lump are no more to be relied on than universal remedies. There are different sorts of hu- man nature. Some arc given to discontent and long- ing, others to securing and enjoying. And let me tell you, the discontented longing style is unpleasant to live with. 10 It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good when she is not believed in when it is always supposed that she must be contemptible. 12 One likes a "beyond" everywhere. 1 END OF "PELIX HOLT." MIDDLEMAROH. (193) MIDDLEMAECH. MANXEKS must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by pre-conceptions either con- fident or distrustful. A man's mind what thei'e is of it has always the advantage of being masculine, as the smallest birch- tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm, and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate ; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality Avith a little gum or starch in the form of tradition. Sometimes, indeed, Celia had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things ; and stilled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too re- ligious for family comfort. Notions and scruples were like spilled needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating. Here was a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed ! Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have gone on at any period but for (195) 196 MIDDLE MA U CII. tliis liberal allowance of conclusion-;, which has facil- itated marriage under (lie diHicnliies of civilization. lias any one ever pinched into its pilnloiis smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship? Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the un- gangcd reservoir of Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing re- flected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought. Signs are small, measurable things, but interpreta- tions are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure tip wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimble- ful of matter in the shape of knowledge. They are not always too grossly deceived: for Shidbad himself may have fallen by good luck on a true description, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and x.igx.ags. we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. With some endowment of stupidity and conceit, Dorothea might have thought that a Christian young lady of fortune should should lind her ideal of life ia village charities, patronage of the humbler clergv. tho perusal of Female Scripture Character-;," iiiii' >ldir,g the private experience of Sara under the old DNpen- satiuit. and Dorcas under the New. and the can 1 of her soul over her embroidery in her o\vn boudoir with a background of prospective marriage to a man who, if MI DDL EJfA RCH. 197 less strict than herself, as being involved in affairs re- ligiously inexplicable, might be prayed for and sea- sonably exhorted. On safe opportunities Celia had an indirect mode of making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic mood by remind- ing her that people were staring, not listening. Mr. Casaubon seemed even unconscious that triv- ialities existed, and never handed around that small- talk of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride- cake brought forth with an odor of cupboard. She pinched Celia's chin, being in the mood now to Ih ink her very winning and lovely fit hereafter to be an eternal cherub, and if it were not doct.rinally wrong to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than a squirrel. Mr T'rooko wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study, since even he, at his age, was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them. All Dorothea's passion was transfused through a mind struggling toward an ideallife; the radiance of IUT transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that came within its level. It had been Celia's nature when a child never to 108 quarrel with any one only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her. and looked like turkey- cocks ; whereupon >he was ready to play at eat's-cradle with them whenever they recovered, themselves. Mr. Casaubon was being unconsciously wrought upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely without hidden calculations either for immediate ef fccts or for remoter ends. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an in- fusion of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting. Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we lind ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens yon may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active, voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices \',,r the>c victims while the swal- lower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorie;dly speaking, a strong h-ns applied '. > Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play o! minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort <,f food she ueeded. ***** MIDDLEXARCir. 199 Her feeling toward the vulgar rich was a sort of re- ligious hatred : they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Kectory : such people were no part of God's de- sign in making the world; and their accent was an afiiiction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the com- prehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that, they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers. She was the diplomatist of Tipt on and Freshitt, and for anything to happen in spite of her vv'as an offensive irregularity. "We mortals, men and women, devour many a disap- pointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep Lack the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, <; ()h, nothing! " Pride helps us ; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts not to hurt others. To have in general but little feeling seems to be the only security against feeling too much oil any partic- ular occasion. 200 MIDDLEMAIiCn. Pride only helps us to be sonorous ; it never makes us so, any more than vanity will help us to be witty. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old Eng- lish style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melan- choly looking: the sort of house lliat must have children, many flowers, open windows, and little vistas of bright things to make it seem a joyous home. Certainly the mistakes that we male and female mor- tals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. Dorothea filled up all blanks with nnmanifestcd per- fections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies. And there are many blanks left, in the weeks of courtship, which a loving faith tills with happy assurance. "\Vc know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful anal- ogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous. I am not sure that, the greatest man of his age. if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape unfavorable relied ions of himself in various small mirrors ; and even Milton, looking for his portrait Lu a 201 spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest, what i.s the report of his own consciousness about his doings or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors ; what fading of hones, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion 1he years are marking off within him; and with what spirit lie wrestles against universal pres- sure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes ; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our consideration inust be our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence ; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us. Mr. Casnubon, too, was the centre of his own world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made for him. and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness for the author of a " Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims some of our pity. All Dorothea's eagerness for acquirement lay within, that full current of sympathetic motive in whi'-h her ideas and iinpuNcs were habitually s\vcp! along. She did not want to deck herself with knowledge to \vear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action; 202 Mr. Lydirafe had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly irrave whatever nonsense was talked to him, ;!iid his dark, steady eyes gave him impressive- ucss as a listeuer. When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if lie had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her reso- lution rather than on his. Dorothea did not look at lliinirs from the proper feminine aimle. The society of such women was about. a> relaxing ;;s irolnir from your \vorl; to teacli ;!ie sec- ond l':>rm. insti'iicl of reeliniiiLr in a [i;iradi-i' \vi: h s'.'.'i/et h'.imlis for bird-note- 1 , and Mi!" eyes for a heaven. MIDDLEMARCn. 203 on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our uniiitrodiiced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramulis persoiue folded in her hand. Even those neighbors who had called Peter Feather- stone an old fox had never accused him of being insincerely polite, and his sister was quite used to the peculiar absence of ceremony with which he marked liis sense of blood-relationship. Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty's intentions about families. Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature tin actress of parts that entered into her j-Jii/xi'jnn : she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged it- self in vain. 204 One can begin so many things with a new person! even begin to be a better man. Loud men called his subdued tone an under-tono, and sometimes implied that it, was inconsistent \vith open- ness ; though there seems to be no reason why a loud man should not be given to concealment of anything except his own voice, 'unless it can be shown that Holy Writ has placed the seat of candor in the lungs. Mr. Bnlstrode had also a deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed attentiveness in his eyes which made those persons who thought them- selves worth hearing infer that he was seeking the utmost improvement from their discourse. Others, who expected to make no great ligure, disliked this kind of moral lantern turned on them. If yon are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine-glass to the light and look judicial. Such joys are reserved for con- scious merit. The mother's eyes are not always deceived in their partiality: she at least can best judge who is the ten- der, lilial-heancd child. Everybody's family doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vic- ious discuses. The evidence' of his cleverness was of the higher intuitive order, lying in his lady patients' immovable conviction, and was unassailable by any MIDDLEMARCn. 205 objection except that their intuitions were opposed by others equally strong. Ldj'gatc was but scven-and-twcnty, an age at which many men are not quite common at which they arc hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, think- ing that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot. ***** He was one of the rarer lads who early get a decided bent, and make up their minds that there is something particular in life which they would like to do for its own sake, and not because their fathers did it. Our vanities differ as our noses do : all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us diflers from another. Does it seem incongruous to you that a Middlemarch surgeon should dream of himself as a discoverer? Most of us, indeed, know little of the great originators until they have been lifted up among the constellations, and already rule our fates. But that Ilerschcl, for ex- ample, who "broke the barriers of the heavens" did he not once play a provincial church organ, and give music-lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait 206 MIDDLEXARCff. and his garments than of anything which was to give, him a title to everlasting fame : ouch of them had his little local personal history sprinkled with small temp- tations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course toward linal companionship \viih the immortals. One's self-satisfaction is an nntaxcd kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated. "We arc not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wed- ded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we arc never weary of describing what King .lames called a woman's " makdom and her fairnesso," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious mar- riage, sometimes frustration and final parting. Ami not seldom the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the Troubadours. 1'or in the mul- titude of middle-aged men who go about their vo- cations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of t heir cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average, and lit to be, MIDDLEMAUCU. 207 packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; lor perhaps Uieir ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled us imperceptibly us the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change ! In the be- ginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath toward infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions ; or perhaps it came with the vibra- tions from a woman's glance. Strange that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our per- sistent self pauses and await.s us. In these matters he was conscious that his life would bear the clo:-est scrutiny: and perhaps the conscious- ness encouraged a little defiance toward the critical si rici ness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. The character of the publican and sinner is not al- ways practically ineompaiibk- wi.h thai of the modern 1'harisee, for the majoriiy of us scarcely see more dis- tinctly the faiiltincss of our own conduct than tin: fauli- ine>s of our own arguments, or the dulnes.s of our own jokes. 208 XIDDLEXAKCII. Many men have been praised as vividly imaginutivo on the stivng.h of thei; 1 profuv..:nc>s in Kidiil'erent, drawing or cheap narration : reports of very poor talk going on in di>tuni orb--: or portrait-- of L;;cii'. r com- ing down on his bad errands as a laruv. uirly man wi,h bat's wings and sjnirts of phosplior -C'.-nci.' : or ex- aggerations of wantonness that seemed to rellect life in a diseased dream, lint these kinds of inspiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous com- pared \viih the imagination that reveals subtile actions inaccesMble by any sort of lens, but trucked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refine- ment of energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated >pace. He, for his part, had tos.-cd away all cheap inventions where ig- norance linds itself able and at ease 1 : he was enamored of that arduous invention which is the very eye of re- search, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted, to pierce the obscurity of tlio.-e minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invi.-ible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poNe and tran>ition which determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness. MIDDLEMARC1I. 209 where sec them for the first time in their own homes ; some indeed showing like an actor of, Denial parts dis- advantageous]}' cast for the curmudgeon in a new piece. The Hector was a likeable man : sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bit- terness or other conversational flavors which make half of us an afiliction to our friends. The fact is unalterable, that a follow-mortal with vho.se nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in (he continuity of married companionship, bo disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogeiher the same. And it would lie astonishing to tind how soon the change is fell if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner com- panion, or to see your favorite politician in the Min- istry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too wo begin by knowing little and believ- ing mud!, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities. In courtship everything is regarded as provisional 14 210 MID T)L E.VA R Off. and preliminary, and the smallest smnplo of virtue or accompli- -Imient N taken to .^uarantee delightful stores which tin 1 broad Ic'iMire of marriage \vill reveal. 15ut the door-sill of marriage, once cros>rd, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on yon i 1 marital voyage, it is iinpossible not to be aware that yon make no way. and that the sea is not within siidit that, in i'act, you are exploring an un- closed basin. There is hardly any contact more depressing to a youuir ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy. " I am very ylad that my presence has made any dif- ference to yon." said Dorothea, who had a vivid mem- ory of evenings in which she had supposed that Mr. Casaubon's mind had irone too deep during the day to be able to ^et to the surface a^ain. How far the judicious Hooker or any other hero of erudition would have been ;he same at Mr. Casaubon's time of life, she had no means of knowim:. so that he could not have the advantage of comparison ; but her husband'.- way of couimen. i ;:'_; on i !! strain^ ly i.npivs- sive objects aroiu.d tin-in had be:run to :;li'e<-; h< r wi;h a sort of mi n'al shiver : he had perhaps the i>e-: i.r,-, n- tion o!' aeqiiii : ini;' hiniM-lf \\oriliily. but milv of aeiiiii!- tin.^ hiiu>elf. \Vhat was fre.-h io !r-r mi;id was worii out to his ; ami such capacity of thought and feeling MIDDLE MARCH. 211 On a wedding journey, the express object of which is to isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to each other, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least, confounding and stultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively, and placed your- selves in a moral solitude in order to have small explo- sions, to find conversation diilicult, and to hand a glass of water without looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to the toughest minds. Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the indispensable might of that myriad- headed, myriad-handed labor by which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or keel were a-making, the signal- shouts of the workmen, the roar of the furnace, the thunder and pla.--h of the engine, were a sublime music to him ; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating star-like in the distance along the high- way, the crane at work on the wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out all these sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry, without the aid of the poets, had imule a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers, a religion without the aid of theology, liis early ambi- 212 MIDDLEXAIt Cir. lion had been to have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was peculiarly dignified by him with the name of business " ; and though he had only been a short time under a surveyor, and hud been chieily his own teacher, he knew more of land, build- in. LT, and mining than most of the special men in the county. His classification of human employments was rather crude, and like the categories of more celebrated men, \vould not be acceptable in these advanced times. lie divided them into ' business, politics, preaching, learn- ing, and amusement." He had nothing to say against the lust four; but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than his own. In the same way he thought, very well of all ranks, but he would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such close contact with " business " as to get often honorably decorated with marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of the woods and lields. Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him. I think his virtual divinities were good prac- tical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful comple- tion of undertakings : his prince of darkne-,-, wa< a slack workman. I5;it there wa^ no >pirit of d'-nial i:i Caleb, and the world seemed so wondron^ to him that he was ivadv to accept any number of ^ysiem^. like uny numb r of lirmamenis, if ih.'V did no: oiivi >;i--'y interfere with the best land drainage, s.ilid building. correct measuring, and judicious boring ^I'or coal). In MIDDLEMARCTI. 213 fact, lie had a reverential soul with a strong practical intelligence. Lydgate was as polite as lie could be in his off-hand way, but politeness in a man who lias placed you at a disadvantage is only an additional exasperation, espec- ially if he happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand. If Lydgate had been aware of all the pride he ex- cited in that delicate bosom, he might have been just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of Immoral pathology or iibrous tissue : ho held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's preeminence without too pre- cise a knowledge of what it consisted in. But Kosamond was not one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being steered by wary grace and propriety. She was not in the habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew to fact, why, they were not intended in that light they were among her elegant accomplishments, intended to please. " I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia, regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neighboring body. 214 MIDDLEMARCn. To know intense joy without. ;i strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife, but his wile's husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his owu person ! It is an uneasy lot at best to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy : to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into '.he vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the eneriry of an action, but al- ways to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim->ightcd. There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send i! to the o I her end of the room ; a IK! to have a (liscu-si')ii coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy. The end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking oru'an, evolving sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before (he re^t of his mind could well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which, MIT)DLEXARCII. 215 when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he had never before thought of. The right word is always a power, and communi- cates its deh'niteness to our action. There was a general sense running in the Feather- stone blood that everybody must watch everybody else, and that it would be well for everybody else to reflect that the Almighty was watching him. lie was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy, with small, furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper, but though! hiui-'elf much deeper than his brother 1'eter; indeed, not likely to be deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not well be more; greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being. lie was an amateur of superior phrases, and never used poor language without immediately correcting himself which was fortunate, as he was rather loud, and given to predominate, standing .or walking about frequently, pulling down his waisicoat with the air of a man who is very much of his own opinion, trimming himself rapidly with his forefinger, and marking each new series in these movements by a busy pi, jy with hi:- large seals. There 1 was occasionally a litile lierce- ness in his demeanor, bu; it was directed chiefly against false opinion, of which there is so much to correct in 21G the Avorld that a man of sonic rending and experience necessarily ha> his patience tried. Dorothea liked her thoughts : a vigorous young mind, not overbalanced by pas.-ion. finds a good in making acquaintance with life, and watches its own powers with interest. If any one will contend that there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstono. I will not pre- sume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it: is mure easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentle- man theoretically than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his per.-onal acquaintance. The country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air : dotted apart on their stations up the moun- tain, they looked down with imperfect discrimination on the belts of thicker life below. Solomon took out hi< white handkerchief again with a sense that in any case there would be allec*. ing pas- sages, and crying at funerals, however dry. was cus- tomarily served up in lawn. 217 If Dorothea spoke with any keenness of interest to 3Ir. Casaubon, he- heard her with an air of patience as if she h;ul I?! veil a quotation from the Delectus familial 1 to him from his tender years, and sometimes men- tioned curily what ancient seels or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were loo nnieh of timt sort in slock already; at other times lie would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her re- mark had questioned. However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beat rice or Pet rarcli and Laura, lime changes the proportion of things, and in later days it, is prefer- able to have fewer sonnets and more conversation. Vrill was not widioiit his intentions to be always "onerous ; but our tongues are lil'le t risers which have usually been pulled before general intensions can be brought to bear. Anypri\'a(e hours in her day "wore usually speii! in her lihi.'-uTeeii boudoir, ;:'.!'! she li::d come to be very fond of it - pallid quain in . No been out- wardly altered there; but while the summer had ,uTad- 218 tially advanced over the western fields lv yond the avemie of elms, the bare ro >m had :^a'!ieri d wi'hin it tluise meniorii s of an inward life which ;!'.! l]ie air as \vi:h a cloud of ^ood or bad angels, the invisible yet ae; ive forms of our spiri' ual triumph-- or our --pirit ual fail--. ])-.;ri>tiiea had been so used to siruir^ie i'or and to lind resolve in lookinic aloiiLj the avenue toward ihe- arc!, of westi rn lia'ht that the vi>i >n it>eif had gained a communicating ]io\vi.-r. Even the pale sla.ic seemed to have reminding glances, and to ;nean mutely, ' Ye.s, \ve know." She vras blind, you see. to many things obvious to other.-; !il;Lly to iread in the \vro:iL: places, as Telia liad v,-;;rned her : yet her blindness to whatever did not lie hi her own pure purpose car-led her safely by the side of precipices where vi.-ion would have been peril- ous with fear. llu-ir a-pe)ii;:~: an 1 ":i the other hand it i-- ::--'o:. ;-!:'::; h >w ;!;,-:.;.'!;, < ;.->;. ;i':e tales our enero,;eh;:!( ::' - m; tho.-;.' v. ho ne\ ei 1 e- 'mpl.iiu or have ie.bod\' t-. com. '.,.:n for the;;i. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Eos- amond's fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live ou in perpetual echoes, and to all line expression (here goes somewhere an originating activity, it' it be only that of an interpreter. Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie fare downmost for ages on a forsaken beach, or "rest, quietly under tli:.' drums and (rain;. lings of many con- quests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago; ihis world being apparently a huge whis- pering-gallery. Such conditions are often minutely represented in our pe''y lifetimes. As the stone \vlii :h has been kicked by general ions of clowns may come ' -y curious lit lie 1 i;;k> of c:Tect under the eye. of a scholar, through whose labors it may a( hist fix the date of in- va.- ions and unlock religions, so a !;it of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or ': ip-g ' p may at last, be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn i into the < iug of a catastrophe. To Uriel, watching; the- progress of planetary his! ory from tlie ! u re 'ill v }>(' jii-'-t as much of a coincidence as iiie other. 220 Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it nii.srht be likely to c;il short his labors or his life. On this point. :is on all others, he shrank fro;n pity: ami if the suspicion of bein;; pi;ied f?r anything in his lot sur- mised or known in spile of himself was embiiterinir. the idea of falling forth a sliow of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was neces- sarily intolerable to him. Kvery proud mind knows .something of this experience, and perhap^ it is only to be overcome by a sen-e of fellowship deep enough to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty in- stead of exalting. TVhen the commonplace i; \Vo must all die" trans- forms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness, I must die and soon," then death grapples us. anil his finirers are cruel: afterward he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did. and our lahe will shortly be." MIDDLEMAN r~77. 221 Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. Mr. Ilorrock looked before him with as complete a neu- trality as if he had been a portrait by a great master. ***** Costume, at a glance, gave Ilorrock a thrilling as- sociation with horses (enough to specify the hat-brim, which took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of bending downward _), and nature had given him a face which by dint of Mongolian eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hat-brim in a moderate inclination upward, gave the ell'ect of a subdued unchangeable; sceptical smile, of all expres- sions the most tyrannous over a susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an in- finite fund of humor too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable crust and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate enough to know it, would be (he tiling and no other. It is a physiog- nomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been more powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses. Scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a stand-still: some- thing we must believe in and do. and whatever that so.ii'.'ihing may be called, it is virtually our own judg- nieni. even when it seems like the most slavish reliance on another. 222 "With the superfluous securities of hope at his com- mand, there was no reason why Fred should not have increased other people's liabilities to any extent but for the fact that men whose names were good for any- thing were Usually pessimists, indi-posed to believe that the universal order of things would necessarily be agreeable to au agreeable voung gentleman. With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their more amiable qualities, forgive their little oll'ences, and concerning each in turn try to ar- rive at the conclusion that he will be eager to oblige us, our own eagerness to Ije obliged being as communi- cable as other warmth. ilrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold hei'Lindicy -Murray above the waves. The remote worship of a woman throned out of their reach plays a great part in men's Jives, but in mou''!i a feelhiLr as ho had toward Doro'hea. was like th" iiihi-riiance "f a i':irtune. \Vlia{ others ini^ht have f-allcil the I'utility of his pai.-m made an addi: ion;;! ddiu'ht for his imaLT- i'.iation: lie was conscious of a generous movement, anil of verilyin.u: in his own experience that higher love-poetry which had charmed his 1'ancy. It was not about the bi'u'iiiiiiacr of his speech that Mr. Drooke w;;s at all anxious : this, he IHt sure, v.-ould be all riu'ht; he should iiave it ion of open sea that mi'rht come after was alanu'nm'. * MIDDLEMAN err. 225 demerit docs not take n, distinct shape in memory, and revive the tingling of shame or the pan:;; of remorse. Xay. it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clinching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention. The incmoiT has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama. If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems linal, simply because it is new. "Wo arc told that: the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see be- yond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come. Vrhen a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could ac- cept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures. Lydgatc was constantly visiting the homes of the P-K.T, and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; hut, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkabU is iL not rather wha! we expect in men that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side, and never compare' them \vi;!i <>;irh other? Expenditure like ugliness a'.id errors becomes a totally new thim; when we attach our own per->o:;ali'y to i'. and incas- uru it by thai wide diil'erenee whieh i ; manifest (in our o\vn sensations; be; ween ourselves and others. At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a i;'en;leman to write le_nb'y. or wi'h a hand in the lea>t suitable to a clerk, i-'ivd wi'ot(.- tlie lines de- manded in a hand as ii-entlenianiy as that of any vis- count or bi>liop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the consonants only di-;: iiiu'ni--hab'e as tunii:.ir np or down, the strokes had a Molly solidity, and the 1< t- ters disd;u'ned to keep the line : in short, i: was a nian- uscript of that venerable kind ea>y to interpret when you kno\v l)ef(jre]iand wlial 'lie \vrl!er means. As Caleb looked on. l:i-- vi -av;- showed a L,TOW;MI; depression, bni when Fred handed him the paper he crave something like a snarl. a;.d rapped ihe jiaper pas- siona : ely with 'lie bark of his hand. J>ad work like "Tli d. uee ! " he ex'-l. ,";.: led. .-nariin'^ly. "To think 1hat this i- a coiin: ry where a m ill's edut'atlm m :y cn>1 h;p: ;,->.;-, ni.il h!;;:;';reil . and i: : :;i-::-- you n'it IhN ! " Tiien in a more p:::!i".ic ton''. p:;-lii:i^ up his hpeclack-> and looking a: the unt'ortunate --eriije, "'iiiu 227 Lord have mercy on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!" : \Yhat can I do, Mr. Gari.li? " said Fred, whose spirits 'lad sunk very low, not only at the estimate of his handwriting, l)iit at the vision of himself as liable to be ranked with ofiice-elerks. "Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line. What's the use of writing at all if nobody can understand ii ? " a>kcd Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied wiih the bad (iiiality of the work. " Is there so little business in the world that you must be sending puzzles over the count:";;:' IJut that's the way people are brought up. I should lose no end of time with the letters some people send me, if Susan didn't make them out for me. It's disgusting'." Here Caleb tossed the paper from him. "Between Lydgatc and Ilosamoud there was that total mining of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of each oilu r. To Lydgate it seemed thai, he had been spending month after month in siicriiiei'.i'i- more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Kosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions without impatience, anil, above all. bearing with >ut betrayal of bitterness to lo:,-k llii'ough less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented io hi j ardor for the more i . '. \-\ (,[' I.'. sion a;ul his scientifi . an aru,r \\'hie:i he had iaiicied that the iutad wife must somehow worship ;is 228 sublime, though not in the least knowing why. 15ut his ciuluraiK 1 !' \v;is mingled wiih :i self-discontent which. if we know ho\v lo be candid, we shall confess to make more Ilian hall' our bitterness under gri;-v- anees, wife or husband included. Il ;il\vays remains true that ii' we h:id been greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us. liosamoud was oppressed by rnnni. and by that dis- satWaclion which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring lo no real claims, springing from no deeper ])assion than Hie vague exac! in.u'iicss of egoism, and yi^t capable of im- pelling action as well as speech. Tndelinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual orbeguilingly agreeable ; and we all know the diiliculty of carrying out a resolve when wo secrcily long that il may inrn out to be un- necessary. In such states of mind t!iemo>t incred- ulous person has a private leaning toward miracle: impossible' to conceive how our wish could be fuliilled ; .still very wonderful things have happened! The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: il sends an inevitable glare over that loiig-unvi-ited past which has b, en habiinally recalled only ia general jtiira-.es. liven wiih"a; mem 1 :'y, ihe life ; : , ;i:-u;;d i.;;o one bv a /one of dependence in ;;'i':r,\'i ;i ai!;! decay ; but in, en>e memory forces a man lo own hi-> lilamewor- hy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened MIDDLEMAUCII. 229 wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present : it is not a re- pented error shaken loose from (he; life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter llavors and the t inklings of a merited shame. Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic; present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything' else, as obsti- nately as, when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep- seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men. It is certainly trying to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a first farewell has pathos in ii, but to come bad; for a second lends an opening to cour/dy. Some one highly susceptible to (he contemplation of a fine ::c! has said thai i! produces a sort of regener- ating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel readv > o be^in a new li le. Lydgate talked persistently when they were in his 2 -3 (J Ml DDL KM A A,' Off. work- room. puiiin.T arguments for ;unl against the probability oi' certain biological views, bul ha had none of those definite Ihinu'-; to say or to show whi< h u'ive Hit.- way-marks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit such as lit; used himself to i:i.-ist on, sayinic :h:i! "there must be- a systole and diastole in ail inquiry." a;id that 'a man's mind must bo continually expand':::;' a:;d shrinking between the \vliolt; human horizon and llic horizon of an obj(;cl-:rlass." lie was not an il!-!ompc! - ed man; his intellectual ac- tivity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as \vell as his strong frame, would always, un U.T toh rably easy con- ditions, have kept him above ;he p-'tty uncontr:;!h-d siisccpt ibiiitie.s which make bad te::i[ier. 15u: he \vas now a prey to that worst irriiation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second con- sciousness u;:d : -r!yiiiLC those annoyances, of wasted enerirv and a th .^radinij: preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes. 77-,'N is what I am thinking of; and /u>'/ is \vh;it 1 mi^ht have been Ihinkinir of." was (lie bi:ier incessant murmur wi.hin liim, m-Ll;ln'j; c-very di;lieiil:y a double iroad to im- patience. Some ^''nll'/men have made an ama/d'ii: fi'-T'ire in li'eralure l>y general di-con'.eiit \v;:h the u:.;ver^e as a t rap of did ness i:iio wh:c!i ', h ir :.rva! si i;il - liave f ;! a by mi -take ; 1ml the sense of a -tup-nd m- self and ;:n in^l^niiieaut \vor!d may !ia\'e i;s con-o!a ; lon-. l.y.l- gaie's disco:i:ei;! \v;is mii;di liar !.'|- t o bear ; i; \va-:!ie .sense that there was a ^raml existence in ihomrht and Ml DDLEX ARCII. 231 effective action lyins^ around him, while his self was bcin'j; narrowed into the miserable isolation of ei>;ois!ie fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that mi^ht allay such fears. His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention oi'lofiV persons who can know nothing of debt except on a ina^nilieent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidncss but by bein.i; free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and teiaptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire to make bad work puss for i^ood, its seeking for function which oun'ht to be another's, its compulsion often to lony for Luck in the shape of a with' calamity. Lydicutc eertninly had i^'iod reason to reflect on the service his practice did him in counteracting hi ; pcr- son-il cures. He had no longer free; eneru'v enough I';;' spontaneous resi'n.rch and specula'dve thinking, bui !y the l)ed.-iide of patients the direct, external calls on his !>'! M1DDLEMARCU. judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw liiiii out of hi;a>elf. 1 1 was no! sim- ply that hi iielicent harne>s of routine whicli enables .silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly it was a perpetual claim on the immediate l'rr.-h application of thought, and on the consideration of anothi'i'V nct-d and trial. Many of n-- lookinn' hack Ihroiiu'h life would >ay that \\\\\ lundiv-i man we have (.VIT kno\vn has been a medical man, or jn'i'haps that surgeon whose- line tact, directed by deeply informed IK rccp; ion. has come to us in our net d \\i;h a more. sublime bciu.'liccnce than that of miracle-workers. When a man is at the foot of the hill in hN fori tines, ]i." may stay a hum' while there in spite of pmf.'-.-ional accomplishment. In the 15riii--h e-limate there i> no incoinpat ibility between scientiiic iu--i:;-hi and l'ui'ni>hed lod^inii's : the iiicom'iaiibiliiy is chielly between >cicn- tiiic ambition and a wife \v!io (jbjects to that kind of residence. lUilstrode shrank from a direct lie wi:h an intensity disproportionate to tin.- number of hi> more indirect misdeeds. Jnit many d' ihe-e nii--deed> wi re lii;e ihe subile mnseular movemenis which are no; taken ac- count of in t lie con>cimi sne oi:!y \\liat \\'e ari- vivi i'y cun <} -u- <;f tiiat \ve can vividlv imairiiie io be seen bv Omi i-cieiice. MIDDLEMARCII. 233 of breaking his vow. Is it that lie distinctly means to break it? Not at all: but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his mnscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow. Thisva-uc conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture' how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge! and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible. Even the more definite scandal cou- ccrning Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds, melted into the mass of mystery, as so much lively mcial to be poured out in dialogue, and to take s fantastic shapes as Heaven pleased. Hopefulness has a pleasure in making a throw of any kind, because the prospect of success is certain; and only a more generous pleasure in offering as many us possible a share in the stake. There are episodes inmost men's lives in which their hi-rlH'st qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lyd- gaie's tendc'r-hearteduess was present just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an 234 emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For lie was very miserable'. Only those who kno\v the suprem- acy of the intellectual life the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it can un- derstand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances. What we call the "just possible" is sometimes true, and the thing we iind it easier to believe is grossly false. Again and again, in his time of freedom, Lydirate had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt, and had said, '' The pure>t experi- ment in treatment may still be conscientious : my bus- iness is to take care of life, and to do the best 1 can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Doirma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." In Middleman/!) a wife could not long remain igno- rant thai the town held a bail opinion nf JUT hu-band. No feminine intimate might carry ho far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the un- pleasant fact known or believed about her husband; HIDDLEHARCn. 235 but when a woman with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral im- pulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance. Candor was one. To be candid, in Middle- march phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position ; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again, there was the love of truth a wide phrase, but meaning, in this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot; the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she knew the truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there \vas the regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be ben- ctited I)}' remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture, and a manner implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for her good. An old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there is the barrier .d consecra- tion : they bind us over to rectit mic and purity by their pure belief about us: and our -ins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust. " If you are not good, noise is u'ood " those little words may give a terrific meaning (o responsi- bility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for ivmor-e. Dorothea's nature was of that kind : her own pas- sionate faults lay along the easily conii'ed open chan- nels of her ardent character ; and while she was full of pity for the visible mistake- of others, -he had not yet any material within her experience for subtle con- structions and suspicions of hidden wr<>i)Lr. Hut that simplicity of hers, holding up an idi'a 1 for other- in her believing conception of them, wa- one of the great powers of her womanhood. It seemed to Will as if he were beholding in a inacic MID OLE MAR Cff. 237 panorama a future where he himself was- sliding into that pler.sureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdi- tion than any single momentous bargain. We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. When Mr. Brooke had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars as if it were a medicine that would iret a milder flavor by mixing. That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know ourselves guiltless be- fore a condemning crowd to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us. The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incar- nate who knows that he is stoned not for professing the Eight, but for not being the man he professed to be. The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web ; promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval. Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam 238 XIDDLEXAKCm and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing .years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm, and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world. Lydgate once called Rosamond his basil plant ; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a mur- dered man's brains. The determining acts of Dorothea's life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that such mistake's could not have happened if the so- ciety into which she was born had not smiled on prop- ositions of marriage from a sickly man to a girl less than half his own age on modes of education which make a woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance on rules of conduct which are in flat con- tradiction with its own loinlly-as>eried belief>. "\Yhile this is the social air in which mortals begin to breathe, there Avill be collisions such as those in Dorothea's MIDDLEXARCIT. 239 life, where great feelings will take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not o-reatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people, with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may pre- sent a far sadder sacritice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, thotmh they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the cart h. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive : for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts ; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ing rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain in that momentous babe's presence with persistent disregard was a course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister. 2-iO Dorothea would have been capable, of carrying baby joyfully for a mile if there had been need, and of loving it tliu more tenderly i'r that labor: but to an aunt who does not rccogni/.e her infant nephew a> Iloiuldha. and has nothing to do for him but to admire. his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watch- ing him exhaustible. It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the Piiini'i-r, when the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience 1 acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance. dispas>ionatcne.-s as well as energy in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the least disposed to share lodgings. An eminent philosopher amor.L*- my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifiing it into the serene, light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be nibbed by a hoir-e-maid will be minutely and mnlti;udinou--ly scratched in all di- rections; but place now again-! it a lighted candle as a ccnlr of illumination, and lo ! the scratches will --eem to arrange themselves i:i a liii" series <\\' concentric circles round that little >nu. It i- demonstrable that th .-cratches are u'oing everywhere inipariLilly, and it is only your candle which produces th" ilaiiering illu- sion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with 241 an exclusive optical selection. These things are a par- able. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather : it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests except the retention of his sn nil-box, concerning which he was watchful, sus- picious, and greedy of clutch. Even while we are talking and meditating about the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day. Probabilities arc as various as the faces to be seen at will in fretwork or paper-hangings : every form is there, from Jupiter to Judy, if you only look with creative inclination. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that ochi;id the big mask and Ilie speaking-trumpet there must ahvays be our poor little eyes peeping as usual, 16 242 JffI'DL L'.VA I; CIT. and our timorous lips more or less under anxious con- trol. It was a festival willi .Mrs. Carth. for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a short holiday Christy, who held i f the most de-ir- able tiling in the world to he a tutor, to study all it- cratures and be a regenerate Porson. and w!io was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of object- lesson IT i veil him by the educational mother. Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother, not much higher than Fred's shoulder which made it the harder that he should be held superior was always as simple as possible, and thought no more of Fred's disinclination to schol- ar-hip than of a ^iraU'e's. wi>hin^ that he himself were more of the same heiirht. A man likes to assure hhii^df. and men of pleasure frenerally, what he could do in the \vay of mischii'f if hi 1 chose, and that if he abstains IVom makinn 1 him-idf ill or be.LT.LTarin.LT himst-lf. oi 1 t;;lkiim' \\ ';; h the utmost loosciics.- \\hich the narro\v limits of hinnan capacity will ailcnv. it i> no! because h'- i> a >p-pone. MIDDLED ARC II. 243 the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incon- gruous manner, To sec ho\v an effect may be produced is often to sec possible missings and checks ; but to sec nothing ex- cept the desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of doubt, and makes our minds strongly intuitive. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Souls have complexions too : what will suit one will not suit another. 1 It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than to love what is great, and try to reach it, and MI DDL EXAli CU. "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less ditiicult to each other? ' By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what \ve would, we are part of the divine power against evil widening the skirts of light and making the strug- gle with darkness narrower.' That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing to tiy for. If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would re- main, and that is worth trying for. tSoine can be happy. I seemed to see that more clearly than ever when I was the most wretched. I can hardly Ihii.k how I could have borne the trouble, if that feeling had not come to me to make Mrc'nirih. 1 Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness i; brings. Kven if we loved some one el.-e In: tier ihan than those we were married to. it would be no UM poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only sei/.c her lan- guage brokenly I mean marriage drinks up all our MIDDLEXAKCIL 245 power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very clear but it murders our marriage and then the marriage stays with us like a murder and everything else is gone. 1 Young people should think of their families in mar- rying. I set a bad example married a poor clergy- man, and made myself a pitiable object among the De Bracys obliged to get my coals by stra-tagem, and pray to Heaven for my salad oil. However, Casau- bon has money enough; I must do him that justice. As to his blood, I suppose the family qnarterings are three cuttle-lish sable, ami a commentator rampant. 2 Yon will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call Ihhsgs by the same names as other people call them by. To IK- sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad : they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you 24G MIDDLEMARCII. arc a little bored here with our irood dowager; hut think what a bore you mi.ulit become yourself to your fellow-creatures i!' you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sininic alone in thai library at Lowiek, you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; yon must iret a IV w people round you who wouldn't believe you il' you told them. That is a flood lowering medicine. 2 "\Ve are rather apt to eon.sider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us. 3 It would be nonsensical to expect that I could con- vince Brooke, and make him act accordingly. Brooke is a very i;ood fellow, but pulpy: he will run into any mould, but he won't keep shape. 3 She is a r D L EX A R err. When a man .nets a good berth, half the deservin; must conic after. 5 By being contemptible we .set men's mind to the tune of contempt. 4 To think of the part one lullc woman can play in the life of a man, so that 1o renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline ! 5 Young women are severe; they don't feel the stress of action as men do.-"' Mr. Ffwlmih'-r. Thi'Vu is the terrible Nemesis fol- lowing on some errors, that it is always possible for thoMj who like it to ini vrpret them into a crime : there it no proof in favor of the man outside his own con- sciousness and assertion. JJi.in >(li.r. Oh, how cruel! And would you not like MIDDLEMARCK. 249 to be the one person who believed in that man's inno- cence, if the rest of the world belied him? Besides, there is a man's character beforehand to speak for him. Mr. Farebrother. But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon, character is not cut in marble it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do. There is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired. Art is an old language with a great many artiiicial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. 6 Motives arc points of honor, I suppose nobody can prove them. 6 Fred. I am so miserable, Mary if you knew how miserable I nm you would be sorry for me. Mnri ,_ _ There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance thau anything else iu the world. You must be sure of two things : you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of if, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not 'be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work, and in learn- ZOO MIDDLEXARCII. ing to do it well, and not be al\va3 r s saying, There's this and there's that if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is I wouldn't give two-pence for him, whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thateher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do. 8 A woman, let her be as good as she may. has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. 8 The lad loves Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It shapes many a rough fel- low." "What I'm thinking of is what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when lie 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. 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. 3 MIDDLEXAR CU. 251 get tired to death of each other, and cau't quarrel com- fortably, as they would at home. 9 "Well, it lies a little in our family. I had it myself that love of knowledge, and going into everything a little too much ; it took me too far: though that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female line ; or it runs under-ground like the rivers in Greece, you know it comes out in the sous. Clever sous, clever mothers. 10 People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for. 10 END OF "MIDDLEMAKCH." INDEX. ABILITY, limits of, 56. Acting, Rosamond's, 203. Actions, great, bind us to a noble life, 145. Ago, marks of life experience, seen in, 8; and youth parts of one life journey, 9; ripening of the soul in, 124. Aged, the grief of the, GO; middle, their duties to the young, 97; young people necessary to the, 131; eyes of the, like their mem- ories, 150. Animals, agreeable friends, 11. Appearances, to be trusted, 70. Association in sound, 90. Art, should illustrate common people and things, 35; an old lan- guage, 1249. Atmosphere, mental, changing, 14. BEAUTY, different kinds of, 34; of a woman's arm, 97; absence of, a t'-ial, TOO. Blindness, 15G. Cliance, te worship of, 120. Character, determined by deeds don 254 INDEX. Childhood, benefit of a happy, 10; forgetfiilnossof tho joya of, 34; For- rows of, S4; loneliness of, s'7 ; associations of, C j0, 91; belief of, 109. Children, management of, 12,'. Church, efi'ect of going to, 127. Clothes, shabby, becoming to Maggie Tulliver, 115. Commonplace, nothing in curtain lights, 1.3. Compromise, ell'eet of, ISO. Conceit, comfort in, 110. Confession, it prompts a response, 10; sympathy, an impulse to, 10; it gives dcfiniteness to memory, 170. Consciousness, description of the recovery of, 11. Consequences, impltying nature of, 70; responsibility for, 75. Convenience, a motive, 20. Courtship, limited knowledge of character in, 200; delusions of, 209 Craig, character of, 01, 0">. Cross, what is the true, OS. D.\Y!.lc;i!T. changes asp.-et of misery, 10. Dead, the, \ve cannot atone to, 0; grief for severity to, ."0; never dead to us till forgotten, 51 ; likeness seen in, 51 ; valuing them above the living, 01. Death and life equally sacred, 10. Deeds, :'' . :'. indestructible, 105; contaminating effect of ill, 100. , 'ies, moral, detected by a f'-minine eye, ',j'.\. I)( inon \vuivhip, still jirevailinL', 1-7. I)' -;):>ir .-ho\vn in self-possession, 50. Dinah, character of, 01. [>i.-c \ ; rs not at first ilisti!i^n:-hed, 2'i5. J>1- :--: us, the waiving of, exasperating, -Jl-t. Doctor, the family, -.Ml. ]>-'-. symjiathy with, i'u. tent of I.ydgate in his life, 200. ] ) .r ithea, < ha racier i ,f. .'!; ln-r mistakes, '-> ; her in'.'uenci', 209. Du'y, id . :', centre of moral life, .'2 ; monitions, of, 110. INDEX. 255 Errors in persons of small means, 25. Evil, olivets of, 75. Exile, effects of, 125. Experience leads to sympathy, 5G; spiritual, not to be explained, 58. FACE, of women we love, 33; adornment needless to a beautiful, 56; lines of the human, touching, 154; of a traitor, 159; of a beautiful woman, 183. Faocs sharpened by consumption, 14; few uncontrolled by self-con- sciousness, 24; expressions of, 52; of boys, inexpressive, 94. Failure to realize plans of early life, 20G. Faith, effect of loss of, in fellow-men, 139. Falsehood becoming unconscious, 121; easy in society, 137. Family likeness, strangeness of, 52. Fanning, unprofitableness of, 01. Fear, use of, 130. Feeling, inure effective than opinion, 54; needful solvent of ideas, 142. Force not measured by negations, 1S3. Forgiveness, meaning of, 57. Friendship delightful, described, 109. GOOD, substantial, 154. Goodness, ea:-iiy discouraged, 216. Gossip in Middleman;!), 234. Gratitude, why some.do not feel it, 172. Grid', becoming insensibility, 3; fashionably dressed female in, 89; real better than false, IS'J. II.U'i'iMiss, not he sought, 111; the search for, fruitless, 123; not obtained suddenly, ITS. Hatred compared to lire, 20. Help, better than alms-giving, 20. lli'tty, character of, 04. Horseback, dialogue on. 49. ]Iou.-e, a melancholy, described, 200. Huuiiliiy. learned through suffering, 12; need of, 59. IDI.A.S- religious, 14. 256 INDEX. Ignorance, a painless evil, 11. Imagination, different kinds of. 208. Imperfection of heroes. :_"_'. Independence, need of, 1*1. Inferences, liberal, from few farts before marriage, 193. Influence, of >incerity ami kindness, 13; of one person on another, 17; men of, nreil to dominate, 1-1S; of the good, elevating, 230. Injustice, the effect of ]>artial knowledge. VI. Inspiration, source of highest thought. 3j. Irwine, Parson, ehararacter of, 4S. Ji:Ai.orsv, demands of. 90; arising from slight causes, 22S. Judgment, according to results, 83; the fear of it sharpens the mem- ory, 22S. KEMPIS, THOMAS A, his Imitation of Christ." 103. Knowledge of a man, necessary from his ow:i stand-point, 201. I.earninL', C'lia's vit'W of, '213. Life, fuller, the growth of sad experience. -14; human, the same in all ages, 13.3; filed of public affairs on privatu, 17-; cliieliy val- uable as opportunity for helping others., ISO. Longings, obstinacy of, 10. Love, beginning in childhood, 10; maternal tenderness in, 10; worthy, allied to religious feeling, : !1 : later, 33; remembrance of first, 34; a niyi-tery, T.">; need of, 'J7 ; of Magu'ie and Stephen, lo.'i; duty be- fore, lO'.i; gives insight, 114; i)oetry of perfect, 124; need of loyalty in. 141; a supreme motive to the highest life, 104; for a good Woman, an influence, 2 IS. Longing, unsati.-lied, 11-1. Loss of familiar objects, 14. MAN. mind of, always masculine, T,'5. Marriage, suitable adjustments in, < ; time of, 77; rest in. 123; no compensation for an unhappy, ll'i; obligations of. permanent. 1'iS; qualifications f>r, equally ncces>;iry mi both >idi 1 -', 214; di-satis- faction in, '--'A ; a betrinuiiiL', '->' '. u at lire of, 21 1 ' Mrs. Cadwallader'a advii-e ab nit, 2l."i; without cunli'leiire, 2.">U. Martyrdom, love of, S2. INDEX. 257 Medicine, practice of, 231 ; conscientious treatment in, 234. Men. slow. 02; tongue-tyed, G3; acnteness of, 04; the strongest often the gentlest, 07; dulness of, 70; restlessness of, 123; they are un- certain instruments, 104. Mildness, not always a permanent quality, 84. Miserliness, common among some classes, 104; of Silas Marner, 120; ii safe quality, 240. Morning, beauty of a summer, 53. Mother, A, dreads no memories, 10; sees the child in the man, 51; love of, differs with different times, 170; lias a self larger than her maternity, 100; not always deceived in her partiality, 234. Music, effect of, 31; relief in, 97; harmony of lovers in, 105; satisfac- tion in, 110. NATURE, the higher understands the lower, 44; difficult to com- prehend, 52; one does nothing at variance with his, 74. Nemesis, characteristics of, 15; and conscience, 43. News, had, Mr. Brooke's way of telling, 237. PAIN, release from acute, 15; effect of witnessing, 4G. Parting, at the root of all joy, 50. Passion, moments of, 14; difficulty of deciding between passion and duty, 94; the inspiration of crime, 141; the nature of, 141; people in passion never wholly right, 107. People, commonplace, worthy of interest, 4; effect of agreeable, 39; severity of mild, 40; susceptible, affected by tone, 40; of the coun- try less impressible than those of the town, 07. Pity, divine and human, 13. Plans, useless to form, GO. Pleasure, wearisome days of, 05. Pluck to light, though sure' of losing, 27. Politeness sometimes a7i exasperation, 213. Possibilities, uncertainty of, 2UO. 1'oyser, Mrs., character of, 72. 258 INDEX. Prayer, power of, 76. Prejudice, natural to some mimls, 92. Pride, it helps to bear disappointment, 109. Prosperity, why I'Vlix Holt renounced it. ISO, 1S1. I'unishment of fellow-creatures, no cause for satisfaction, 27. Purity of purpose a safeguard, 213. QUARRELS, limitation of, 95. Quarrelling, not always harmful, 102. RELIGION more than dor'trine, 57. Renunciation of self-will the beginning of wisdom, 153. Repentance, the beginning of a new life, 1G3. Repetition, effect of, 11. Results not always evident, 182. Reticence, Tito's love, of, 144. Retribution less needed than pity, S3. Rhone and Rhine, scenery on the, 81. Riding, pleasure of stage-coach. 174. Rumor, personilied, 172. SAVONAROLA, impression produced by face of, 140; Ronml.i's trust in, 147; character of, 14S, 14'J, 15n, 151. Seed sown unconsciously, 13. Self-deception of ynung girls, ll'fi, lf/7. Self-questioning, a morbid habit. 123. Servants, want of faithfulness in, 05. Severities, half-way, blunders, 154. Sick-room, a rcf.iire from the restlessness of intellectual doubt. 21. Sin. shame for, 11; of prosperous peo-ile, V< ; cherished. ])revents pai-'lon, OS ; elleets of. widely felt. '.'0; leads often to greater watch- fulm ss, MS. Sorrow, wounds of, jiennanent, ^ : a.-~oci::;io!!s of nature with, 0; an indestrueiil.Ie foree. 41; di- pair in lir.-!, 4'.'; co!,f;;-ion of mind in, 4:i; ln'num!;ing i:i:'nenee<,r, :,o ; w-iliinirness to b. ar, '!.'; arising from i'alse ideas, II: 1 ; of wmuen, i-au.-e.', by h:;~ly ^pei'di, 17>.i. : . ha.-te in, <<-; hard, sad to remember, ] ;:;. Speeeh-making. secret of, 153; .Mr. Brooke's, 224, dillleulties of, 245. INDEX, 259 Btolling, Mrs., character of, 105. Strangers, interesting, 203. Strength often shown in homage to weakness, 109. Strong, duty of the, 54. Submission, energy needful to, 21S. Suffering, a regeneration, 44. Sympathy, a key to knowledge of others, 17; a help to patience and charity, 45. TALK, pleasure in, 03; possibility of abstaining from, 03; useless- ness of, 19U. slrows mental qualities of speaker, 243. Time changes aspect of things, 34. Tom and Maggie, character of, 83. Tongues, unmanagcableness of, 21 1. Trouble, common to all. GO; work gives help in, 00. Trust, of youth in go.nl fortune, 47; gives strength, 57; best placed in bachelors. 72; need of, 123. Truth, every, valuable, 1S2. Truthfulness, a rare quality. 37. Tuliiver, Mr., character of, 1UU; Mrs., character of, 99. Tunes, Scotch, comparison of, 71. WAKING, sensations of. 133. Watching in a sick-room. S7. Walkintr, Komola's way of, 159. Wedding journeys, disagreements on, 211; Mrs. Cadwallader's opin- ion of. 25U. Women, complaining, described, -13; foolishness of. 04; unreason- ableness of, 72; quickness of, 72; not n blessing, 73; ditleivnee bet ween delicate and coarse, 74; timidity of. OS; fondness for help in, U)il; youiiL', th.-ir aliility to jmige men, 107; ardor of a good woman, 'a valuable influence, 174; effect on men of the littleness of, 1S3; an inexhaustible subject of study, l'J7; like Dorothea, too 2GO INDEX. Rtimulntintr, 202; plain, howLydsrate regarded them, 202; Lydgnte's notion of earnest. 21(1; influence of, 248. Words, ineompeteney of, 124. Work, needful as worship, &:J; pleasure in, 55; need of persistent, 112; become* .omctime.s an end, 122 ; Caleb Gartb's view of. 211. Writing, Fred Yinc-ey's, liand, 22G; sometimes better than speech, 247. YOCTII, not in itself hopeful, 225. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON. Author of "A Painter's Camp," "The Intellectual Life," "The Unknown River," " Chapters on Animals." Ne-v Edition, Revised, ivith Notes and an Introduction. "Fortunate is he who at an eai!y age knows what Art is." GOETHB. CONTENTS. I. That certain Artists should write on Art. II. Painting from Nature. III. Painting from Memoranda. IV. The Relation between Photography and Painting. V. Word- Painting and Color-Painting. VI. Transcendentalism in Painting. VII. The Law of Progress in Art. VIII. Artists in Fiction. IX. Picture Buying. X. Fame. XI. Art Crit- icism. XII. Analysis and Synthesis in Painting. XIII. The Reaction from Pre-Raphaelitism. XIV. The Artistic Spirit. XV. The Place of Landscape-Painting amongst the Fine Arts. XVI. The Housing of National Art Treasures. XVII. On the Artistic Observation of Nature. XVIII. Proudhon as a Writer on Art. XIX. Two Art Philosophers. XX. Leslie. XXI. Picture-Dealers. XXII. Thorvaklsen. XXIII. The Philosophy of Etching. XXIV. Amateur Paint- ers. XXV. Can Science help Art ? XXVI. Picture-frames. XXVII. Autographic Art. One handsome square 121110 volume, uniform with "The Intellectual Life." Price 62.00. Sold crcryrvkcrc. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. A PAINTER'S CAMP. BY PHILIP GILBEUT UAMEUTON. In Tiiree Books. Book I., In England; Book II., In Scotland, Book III., la France. 1 vol. lonio. Price $1.50. From The Atlantic Monthly. " They (' A Painter's Camp in the llighlan !<.' and ' Thoughts about Art ') are tlie most usfful bucks that could be placed in the hauls of tue American Art public. If "we were asked win-re the nio.-t intelligent, the must trustworthy. the most practical, and the most interesting exposition (if .MoJeni Art and cognate subjects is to be found, we s.houid point to Hamerton's writings." From The Rnuii'l Table. " Considered merely in its literary aspect, \ve know of no pleasanter book than this for summer reading. Artistically, we consider it a uiost valuable addition to cur literature." From Tat New \'ork Tribune. "In the pursuit of his profession as a landscape-painter, the author has not hesitated to plunge into the n-mo'e and unattractive nooks and comers of n.-Uur, gathering a rich store of materials for hi.- pencil, and describing his whimsical experiences with a gayety and Unction in perfect keeping witu tue subject Ilia account of the practical methods by wh;c:i he con, (in-red tlie diiiiculties of the position is instructive in the extreme, wnile the anecdotes an 1 a I ventures which. he relates with .-ucii exuberant fuu make nis bi.uk. one of tue most entertaining of the season.'' From TIP. Pkilivlf'^liia Ei-mhiir T, ! -rn/,/1. " U'e are not addicted to enthusiasm, but the little work before us ia really so full of good points that we ._;roiv so admiring as to appear almo-i fulsome in it prai.-e. . . it Has been many a day since we have been called upon to review a work which gave us such real pleasure.'' ecording the writer's experience . '1'ne v-uume is intere-tin^, not n:i-!i !. fertile amount of sii_'^e-tive tiiou_'ht ;:iil iVc-h oli-c-rvation it ciuitain.s bearing on tlie author's o.vn ).rofe-.-ion, but for it.- sketi lies ut Char.u-rer anj s?ein-r.\ , an.l its shreud and ki en remarUs on topic- disconnected with Art. There .re M-r\ few chapters ot foreign travc.. for in-tance. uhicli are so admirable iu tv.-n rc-pect as Mr. 11 unerton's arti -le on A Little l-'ri-ii'-h t'it\ : ' an 1 the gen- era! opinions on Art given in the Kpi.o^ue ' aj-e \vi'r'h\ tin- atti-uti.in of all |,ain'.,-;'s, especially of tin- champions ot extreme schools. U e hive never set-ii miy of .Mr, Uamer'ton's picture- : but if he paints as de.ightl'ully as lie writes, lia asu.it be an artist of more than common skiii." s. M'liL'.l, jws'ji'ii'l, on nciijit tf }/ricc by the KOliLIliTS liltUTHKRS, Bosxoir. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, AUTHOR OF "A Painter's Camp," "Thoughts About Art," "The Un- known River," "Chapters on Animals," Square I2mo, cloth, gilt. Price $2.00. Front the Christian Union. the most irreconcilable doctrines. To read Mr. llamerton's writings is an intel- lectual luxury. They are not boisterously strong, or excitii.g, or even very forci- ble: but they are instinct with the finest feeling^ the broadest sympathies, and a philosophic calm that acts like an opiate on the unstrung nerves of the hard- j*iimj. i^n 11, L.Luit nun ueis JIKC .111 ujMtite uu uie UILSUUIIL; neives 01 me Uiiltl- wrought literary reader. Calm, equable, and beautiful, 'The Intellectual Life,' when contrasted with the sensational and half digested clap-trap that forms so large a portion of contemporary literature, reminds one of the old picture of the :d. through the fighting and blasphem- , - - .-. tit, calm and se.f-p - ing crowds tint thronged the beieagnred city. "'Lhi-; book is written with perfect s'maleness of purpose to help others towards an intellectual life," says the //<> Daily A e new more ntten. les. of ate ai.d tender feeling Tril'ir e "A de'idittV.l book is the elegant littl: in?ti: ct witli tlie quality of the fne-t L'liri-tian is, c.':-fi-.\in^ ^edatu with Ios-rs and cafes, with i i : iration that i< t'tii! of tcrii. ' 'J'h-j ; oein- lit" this lady have taken a j hi'ilicr thin tliat of any iivinu Ai'ieric.it) ii,i::_' ]i of a d er.Mir.'.ity. \vh:ch V:-.A\ ]i!;eie ' and r.nites al ih 'Liuht Inte>--O t;in. Since '; : ' ' !- K. L..' no \vc flap n UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY