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WIT AND WISDOM
OF
GEORGE ELIOT.





WIT AND WISDOM
OF
GEORGE ELIOT.

UT LECA
REGIE
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1874.


Kcalo7
MARVARD WILLES
Wen, 12, 1937)
KLIENART
Prof. Edward B. Hill
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
ROBERTS BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
STEREOTYPED BY JOHN C. REGAN,
19 SPRING LANE, BOSTON.


CONTENTS.
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PAGE.
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SCENES FROM CLERICAL LIFE
Amos Barton . .
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Mr. Gilfil
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266 Mester Ford” .
Janet's Repentance
1 Mrs. Linnet . .
2 Mr. Jerome . .
3 Mr. Dempster .
4 Mr. Tryan . .
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ADAM BEDE . .
1 Adam . .
2 Mrs. Poyser .
3 Dinah Morris
4 Bartle Massey
5 Parson Irwine
6 Seth Bede .
? Lisbeth Bede.
8 Mrs. Irwine.
9 Martin Poyser
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(ii)


iv
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THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
? Bob Jakin . .
2 Maggie Tulliver .
3 Mr. Deane .
4 Mr. Tulliver . ..
5 Phillip Wakem ..
6 Lucy Deane.
7 Stephen Guest
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PAGE.
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SILAS MARNER . .
1 Dolly Winthrop .
2 Priscilla Lammeter
3 Mr. Macey . .
4 Mr. Lammeter .
6 Godfrey Cass .
6 Nancy Lammeter.
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••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••
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ROMOLA . . .
Nello . .
2 Bratti
3 Machiavelli .
4 Romola . .
5 Bardo
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6 Tito
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7 Bernardo .
8 Savonarola .
9 Caparra. .
10 Cosimo . .
11 Monna Brigida
12 Pietro Cenini
13 Ridolfi . .
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CONTENTS.
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PAGE.
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FELIX HOL . . .
Felix . . .
2 Rufus Lyon . .
3 Mrs. Holt . ..
4 Denner . . .
6 Mr. Wace . ..
6 Mr. Johnson : ..
7 Rev. A. Debarry.
8 Parson Lingon ..
9 Tommy Trounsen .
10 Harold Transome.
11 Mottoes.
12 Esther Lyon . .
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MIDDLEMARCH
Dorothea . .
2 Mrs. Cadwallader .
3 Mr. Cadwallader.
4 Lydgate . . .
5 Mr. Farebrother.
6 Will Ladislaw
7 Mary Garth . .
8 Caleb Garth . ..
Celia . . .
10 Mr. Brooke . .
• • • • • • • ....
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INDEX
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. 253








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 close to us,
and was the divinest 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 unfecundated egg, which the waves 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 finest wax; it is only when you stick
it in the silver candlestick, and introduce it into the
(3)


AMOS BARTON.
drawing-room, that it seems 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
purpose amid all the bungling feebleness of achieve-
ment.
Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much
easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate
the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, 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 census are neither
extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor
extraordinarily wise; their eyes are ncither deep and
liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed
witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth
escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are cer-
tainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions
have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion
of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions
more or less muddy, whose conversation is 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 sorrows, and their sacred joys;


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 my 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 fine proportions and aris-
tocratic mien, who makes no faux pas, 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-shapen, 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 efforts are
often blunders, and who in general gets more kicks
than half-pence.


AMOS BARTON.
What mortal is there of us, who would find his sat-
isfaction enhanced by an opportunity 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 pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsist-
ence! 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-lap hanging out, and
that he is tickling people by the 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 saying, that no
miracle can be wrought 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 shine in con-
versation with him any more. Let me discover that
the lovely Phæbe thinks my squint intolerable, and I
shall never be able to fix her blandly with my disen-
gaged eye again.
Thank heaven, then, that a little illusion is left to
us, to enable us to be useful and agreeable — that we
don't know exactly what our friends think of us — that
the world is not made of looking-glass, to show us jr
the figure we are making, and just what is going on
pehind our backs! By the help of dear friendly illu.


MR. GILFIL'S LOVE-STORY.
It is with men as with trees: if you lop off their
finest branches, into which they were pouring their
young life-juice, the wounds 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 just when it was expanding into plenteous
beauty; and the trivial erring life which we visit with
our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion
of a man whose best 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 bursting buds that were
once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, 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 also, with my mind's
eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken rem-
nant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and
bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and
(8)


MR. GILFILS LOVE-STORY.
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.
Rich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early
sorrow, strangely different as they seem from the
scanty white hairs, the apathetic content, and the un-
expectant 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; tlic waving
grasses are swept away, and the meadows lic 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, presently the patches of
yellow stubble lie side by side with streaks of dark-
red earth, which the plough is turning up in 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. GILFIL'S 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 mosť 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: when 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.


MR. GILFIL'S LOVE-STORY.
11
.
To minds on the Shepperton level it is repetition,
not novelty, that produces the strongest effect; and
phrases, like tunes, are 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 are such agreeable friends - they ask no
questions, they pass no criticisms.
There are few of us that are 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
MR. GILFIL’S LOVE-STORY.
We have all our secret sins; and if we knew our-
selves, we should not judge each other harshly.'
Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as
they are often better than we are. And God sees us as
we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions,
as our fellow-men see us. We are 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.'
We can hardly learn humillty and tenderness enough
except by suffering.'
Th' yoong men noo-a-deys, the’re poor squashy
things — the looke well anoof, but the woon't wear,
the' woon't wear.
END OF "MR. GILFIL'S LOVE-STORY.”


JANET'S REPENTANCE.
The 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 flowers 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 whose childood has known caresses
there is always a fibre 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.
(13)


14
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
There is an unspeakable blending of sadness and
sweetness in the smile of a face 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 solenn
silence of night.
There are 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 wali 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. Nay, 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 distant days, as in all other times and
places where the mental atmosphere is changing, and
men are inhaling the stimulus of new ideas, folly often
mistook itself for wisdom, ignorance gave itself airs
of knowledge, and selfishness, turning its eyes up-
ward, called itself religion.
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which,


JANET'S REPENTANCE.
15
once set afloat in the world, are taken up by 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 stature, 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-


16
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 the 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 toilsome 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 something
to love; the second, something to reverence.
It is because sympathy is but a living again through
our own past in a new form, that confession often
prompts a response of confession.
The impulse to confession almost always requires the
presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart: and in our
moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have
no tie but our common nature, seems nearer to us than
mother, brother, or friend. Our daily familiar life is
but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a
screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who sit
with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off
from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken
evil and unacted good.


JANET'S REPENTANCE.
17
Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on
another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible 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
tasseled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our
sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart
us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt.
But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe
upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft
responsive hands, they look at us with 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
1o Dame.
Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-
man is that which enables us to feel with 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


18
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
of another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a
fricasee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, and
the most intelligent boy, if accommodated with claws
or hoofs, instead of fingers, would be likely to remain
on the lowest form? If 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 you 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, healthy 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 muffin; 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 first 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 he 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 re-
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 easy 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 are 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 you would
be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in
statistics.
Doubtless a complacency resting 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 sacrifice 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 sin-
ner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has
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 – where 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 we


- 22
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our nature
rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of
love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of
our 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. No 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, has been introduced into his nature; he
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 neither Luther nor John Bunyan,
for example, would have satisfied the modern demand
for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is
true, feels nothing but what is exalted, and does noth-
ing but what is graceful. The real heroes, of God's
making, are quite different: they have their natural
heritage of love and conscience which they drew in
with their mother's milk; they know one or two of


24
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
The drowning man, urged by the supreme agony,
lives in an instant through all his happy and unhappy
past: when the dark flood has fallen like a curtain,
memory, in a single moment, sees the drama acted
over again. And even in those earlier crises, which
are but types of deathwhen we are cut off abruptly
from the life we have known, when we can no longer
expect to-morrow to resemble yesterday, and find 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 see 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 suffered from time and barbarous
hands, has gained a solemn history, and fills our imag-
ination the more because it is incomplete to the sense.
There are unseen elements which often frustrate our
wisest calculations – which raise up the sufferer from
the edge of the grave, contradicting the prophecies of
the clear-sighted physician, and fulfilling the blind


24
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
The drowning man, urged by the supreme agony,
lives in an instant through all his happy and unhappy
pust: when the dark flood has fallen like a curtain,
memory, in a single moment, sees the drama acted
over again. And even in those earlier crises, which
aze but types of death — when we are cut off abruptly
from the life we have known, when we can no longer
expect to-morrow to resemble yesterday, and find our-
selves by some sudden shock on the confines of the
unknown -- there is often the same sort of lightning-
Aaslı through the dark and unfrequented chambers of
memory.
In this artificial life of ours, it is not often we see a
human lince 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
puro majestic outline and depth of tint
and
neglect leave their traces on such 1
rills
us to the last, like a glorious
oth, lor
all the loss it has suffer
harous
hands, has gained
ination
nse.



JANET'S 2
win-
fight
clinging hopes of affection
Tryan called the Divine
of ignorance which stara
the feelings of trust and
foundest philosopliya
n the
re but
ve feel
w-pas-
History, we lion
foist very oldini
change of costume. In
wards, we fine
at the uter
Bus erant me
the antarmusic
ditentia
own wis-
een us and
w. But as
eet, we have
steps; as the
councils that de-
he is in, hears
and which he must
setting
Deum
just such as I- the help-
pless — that God specially
a offers all the riches of his
Tess only; forgiveness would be
us under the powers of our evil
gth - that strength which enables
D OF " JANET'S REPENTANCE.”


26
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
dulge in a few delinquencies. “They've got the money
for it,” as the girl said of her mistress who had made
herself ill with pickled salmon.
Color blindness, which may mistake drab for scarlet,
is better than total blindness, which sees no distinction
of color at all.
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 'ull lie heavy on his
stomach, piety or no piety. I called in one day when
she was dishin' up Mr. Tryan's dinner, an' I could see
the potatoes was as watery as watery. It's right
enough to be speritial — I'm no enemy to that; but I
like my potatoes mealy. I don't see as anybody 'ull
go to heaven the sooner for not digestin' their dinner
- providin' they don't die sooner, as mayhap Mr.
Tryan will, poor dear man."
I'd rether given ten shillin' an' help a man to stand
on his own legs, nor pay half-a-crown to buy him a
parish crutch; it's the ruination on him if he once
goes to the parish. I've see'd many a time, if you 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.”


JANET'S REPENTANCE.
27
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of win-
ning; but give me the inan who has pluck to fight
when he's sure of losing. 3
Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the
hand of God 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 ? '
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
enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the
foot-soldier who 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.
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.“
END OF " JANET'S REPENTANCE.”


----
-
- -
-
-


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 hardly 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 vistas, or calm 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 its
keenest moment passes from expression into silence,
our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object,
and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.
Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on 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
(31)


32
ADAM BEDE.
binding together your whole being past and present in
one unspeakable vibration : melting you in one moment
with all 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 present
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 check 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-off mighty love that
has 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 impersonal
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 for
a long time to come, in spite of mental philosophers,


ADAM BEDE.
33
who are ready with the 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 first poems their best? or are 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 always 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 who 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


34
ADAM BEDE.
moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of
beauty.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to
make fools of themselves in varicus styles, from the
desperate to the sheepish; 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 kittens, or very small downy
ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft
bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage
in conscious mischief - a beauty with which you can
never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for
inability to comprehend the state of mind into which
it throws you.
Men's muscles move better when their souls are
making merry music.
No story is the same to us after the lapse of time;
or rather, we who read it are no longer the same in-
terpreters.
So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from
our memory: we can never recall the joy with which
we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on
our father's back in childhood ; doubtless that joy is
wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-
past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness
of the apricot; but it is gone forever from our imag-
ination, and we can only believe in the joy of childhood.


ADAM BEDE.
35
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 a memory that gives a more ex-
quisite touch to tenderness, that feeds 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.
There is a sort of fascination in all sincere unpre-
meditated eloquence, which opens to one the inward
drama of the speaker's emotions.
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 proportion, but in the secret of deep human
sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a float-
ing violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light;
paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face
upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine
glory; but do not impose on us any æsthetic 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 dingy 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 with 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 fit a world of extremes.
Therefore let Art always remind us of them; therefore
let us always have men ready to give the loving pains
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 in 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
every-day 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 halt so frequent as your
common laborer, who gets his own bread, and eats it
vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It
is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy
connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighis out
my sugar in a vilely-assorted cravat and waistcoat,
than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green


ADAM BEDE.
37
feathers; – more needful that my heart should swell
with loving admiration at some trait of gentle good-
ness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth
with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who
is perhaps rather too corpulent, and in other respects
is not an Oberlin 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 unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well
and you will find 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 fine 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 find 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 flower-pot,


38
ADAM BEDE.
or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light,
softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her
mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-
wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common
things which are the precious necessaries of life to
her; — or I turn to that village wedding, kept between
four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom
opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced
bride, while elderly and middle-aged 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 much 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, colder
eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields
- on the real breathing men and women, who can be
chilled by your indifference, or injured by your prej-
udice; who can be cheered and helped onward by
your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken,
brave justice.
Human nature is lovable, and the way I have learnt
something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries,
has been by living a great deal among people more or
less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would
perhaps hear nothing very surprising if you were to
inquire about them in the neighborhoods where they
dwelt. Ten to one most of the small shopkeepers in


ADAM BEDE.
39
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 enough to command
their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with
the narrowest and pettiest. For example, I have
often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak,
who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbors in
the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the
people in his own parish and they were all the peo-
ple he knew - in these emphatic words : “Ay, 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 he
had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant
parish, he might find neighbors worthy of him; and
indeed he 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, he has found the people up that back
street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants
of Shepperton - 6a 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.”
It is very pleasant to see some men turn round;
pleasant as a sudden rush of warm air in winter, or
the flash of firelight in the chill dusk.
A peasant can no more help believing in a tradi-
tional superstition than a horse can help trembling
when he sees a camel.


40
ADAM BEDE.
We are often startled by the severity of mild people
on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild
people are most liable to be under the 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 you 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 day 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 combinatior 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


ADAM BEDE.
that the second wrong presents itself to him in the
guise of the only practicable right. The action which
before commission has been seen with that blended
common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is
the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards
with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which
all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to
be made up of textures very much alike. Europe ad-
justs itself to a fait accompli, and so does an individual
character, - until the placid adjustment is disturbed
by 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 walk through the fields 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 precision 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 bargains to the door on
sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell yon,
perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to
create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them : it
only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.


ADAM BEDE.
43
judge him by our modern standard: he never went to
Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read
Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.
Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of
cur consciences — out of the suffering we feel in the
suffering we may have caused : there is rarely metal
enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral
sense learns the manners of good society, and smiles
when others smile; but when some rude person gives
rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part
against us.
Women who are never bitter and resentful are often
the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as
he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared
a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very
rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye — a fury with
long nails, acrid and selfish. Depend upon it, he
meant a good creature, who had no joy but in the
happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to
make uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for
them, and spending nothing on herself. Such a woman
as Lisbeth for example — at once patient and com-
plaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the
live-long day over what happened yesterday, and what
is likely to happen to-morrow, and crying very readily
both at the good and the evil.
One of the lessons a woman most rarely learns, is
never to talk to an angry or a drunken man.


44
ADAM BEDE.
It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can
never understand the higher, the higher nature com-
mands a complete view of the lower. But I think the
higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we
learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard expe-
rience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking
things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space
wider than it is.
An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen
a wise man can place between himself and the truth.
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a
baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new
state.
It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a
sad experience has brought us is worth our own per-
sonal share of pain: surely it is not possible to feel
· otherwise, any more than it would be possible for a
man with cataract to regret the painful process by
which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking
had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent
day. The growth of higher feeling within us is like
the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of
added strength: we can no more wish to return to a
narrower sympathy, than a painter or a musician can
wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher
to his less complete formula.
Adam Bede had not outlived his sorrow - had not


ADAM BEDE.
45
felt it slip froin him as a temporary burden, and leave
him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid.
It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our
wrestling, if we won nothing but our old selves at the
end of it - if we could return to the same blind loves,
the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts
of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over
blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that
Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepres-
sible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thank-
ful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force,
only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from
pain into sympathy — the one poor word which in-
cludes all our best insight and our best love.
In our eagerness to explain impressions, we often
lose our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.
If I have read religious history aright — faith, hope,
and charity have not always been found in a direct
ratio with a sensibility to the three concords; and it
is possible, thank Heaven! to have very erroneous
theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon
which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store,
that she may carry it to her neighbor's child to "stop
the fits,” may be a piteously ineficacious remedy; but
the generous stirring of neighborly kindness that
prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is
not lost.
Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough


46
ADAM BEDE.
patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling
companions in the long and changeful journey? And
there is but one way in which a strong determined soul
can learn it — by getting his heart-strings bound round
the weak and erring, so that he must share not only
the outward consequence of their error, but their in-
ward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson.
Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds,
will often rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if
they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering
sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an
ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from lac-
eration.
If a country beauty in clumsy shoes be only shallow-
hearted enough, it is astonishing how closely her
mental processes may resemble those of a lady in
society and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect
to the problem of committing indiscretions without
compromising herself.
Pray how many of your well-wishers would decline
to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is
sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you
highly, and will really rejoice if any one else 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


48
ADAM BEDE.
that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering
agony.
Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's,
struggling amidst the serious, sad destinies of a huinan
being, are strange. So are the motions of a little
vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.
How pretty it looked with its parti-colored sail in the
sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!
"Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its
moorings.”
But that will not save the vessel – the pretty thing
that might have been a lasting joy.
See the difference between the impression a man
makes on you when you walk by his side in familiar
talk, or look at him in his home, and the figure he
makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even
in the cyes of a critical neighbor, who thinks of him
as an embodied system or opinion rather than as a
man.
Parson Irwine was one of those men, and they are
not the commonest, of whom we can know the best
only by following them away from the market-place,
the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into
their own homes, hearing the voice with which they
speak to the young and aged about their own hearth-
stone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the
every-day wants of every-day companions, who take all


ADAM BEDE.
49
their kindness as a matter of course, and 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 unsympathizing 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,
if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take
another bite and find it possible to go on.
There is no despair so absolute as that which comes
with the first 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.
Lisbeth 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 confusion


50
ADAM BEDE.
first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human
soul is like one who has been deposited sleeping among
the ruins of a vast city, and wakes up in dreary amaze-
ment, not knowing whether it is the growing or the
dying day — not knowing why and whence came this
illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds
himself desolate in the midst of it.
In our times of bitter suffering, there are 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 has gone into everlasting
silence, and we have seen his face for the last time in
the meekness of death!
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is


ADAM BEDE.
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 new 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 was and is not.
The mother's yearning, 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
ADAM BEDE.
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 sickness to des-
olation as well as new forces to genius and love. There
are so many of us, and our lots are so different: what
wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast
with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of
a large family, and must learn, as such children do,
not to expect that our hurts will be made much of — to
be content with little nurture and caressing, and help
each other the more.
Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious;
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 are faces which Nature charges with a mean-
ing and 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
deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere,
but not paired with these eyes — perhaps paired with
pale eyes that can say nothing; just as a national lan-
guage may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips
that use it.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together
by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web
of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and


ADAM BEDE.
53
ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at
every movement. We hear a voice with the very
cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise ;
we see eyes - ah! so like our mother's - averted from
us in cold alienation; and our last darling child star-
tles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted
from 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 see 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 when 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-speritial; we
must have something beside Gospel i’ this world.
Look at the canals, an' th' aqueducs, an' th' coal-pit
engines, and Arkwright's mills there at Cromford; a
man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them
things, I reckon. But thear some o' them preachers,
you'd think as a man must be doing nothing all's life
but shutting's eyes and looking what's a-going on in-
side him. I know a man must have the love o' God


ADAM BEDE.
in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what
does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put his sper-
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 sperrit o' God in all things and all times — week-
day as well as Sunday — and i' the great works and
inventions, and i' the figuring and the inechanics. 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 for's wife to
save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his
bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o'
one, he's doing more good, and he's just as near to
God, as if he was running after some preacher and
a-praying and a-groaning.
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."
“They that are strong ought to bear the infirmities
of those that are weak, and not to please themselves.”
There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines
by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the
wrong road i’ this life if you run after this and that
only for the sake o' making things easy and pleasant


ADAM 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 you, you can't be easy a-mnak-
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
uns,
There's nothing like settling with ourselves as
there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no
use looking on life as if it was Treddles'on fair, where
folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do,
we shall find it different."
I like to read about Moses best, in th’ Old Testa-
ment. He 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
down, somebody's the better for it being done well,
besides the man ás does it."
I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i'
that 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 hate to see a man's
arms 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 'ull go on
turning a bit after you loose it."


56
ADAM BEDE.
A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in
his work, will do his business as well as if he 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.
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.'
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 tune, you don't want
t'hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.'
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' the joyfullest time o' the year,
and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I
suppose it'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.'
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 feel what other 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


ADAN BEDE.
57
has, the better he'll do 's work; and feeling's a sort o'
knowledge."
It ’nd 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 uns, then.
There's no rule so wise but what it's a pity for
somebody or other."
It's a feeling as gives you a sort oʻliberty, as if you
could walk more fearless, when you've more trust in
another than y' have in yourself.'
It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies.'
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 may be able to work problems
straight off in's head as he sits by the fire 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.'
When people's feelings have got a deadly wound,
they can't be cured with favors.'
I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my


58
ADAM BEDE.
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.
The best fire doesna flare up the soonest."
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. For my part, I think it's
better to see when your perpendicular's true, than to
see a ghost.'
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, “Do this and that'll
follow," and, “Do that and this 'll 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’most, so as


ADAM 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 find. That shows me there's
deep speritial things in religion. You can't make
much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it.
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.' .
It takes something else besides 'cuteness to make
folks see what'll be their interest in the long run. It
takes somes conscience and belief in right and wrong."
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."
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none
ourselves.
I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o'


ADAM BEDE.
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.'
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.'
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."
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 they see 'em,
and get a fresh lot every year.


ADAM BEDE.
luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be
done.?
It's them as take advantage that get advantage i’
this world, I think : folks have to wait long enough
afore its brought to 'em.?
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'll 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 geck as everybody's a-laughing at?
She might as well dress herself fine to sit back’ards
on a donkey,
I've 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.
The men are mostly so tongue-tied - you're forced
partly to guess what they mean, as you do wi' the
dumb creaturs.?
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.”


64
ADAM BEDE.
It seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th'
only folks as aren't wanted i’ th' other world.?
One 'ud think, and hear some folks talk, as the men
war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o'wheat
wi’ only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-
door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason they can see
so little o' this side on ’t.? ,
Them as ha’ never had a cushion don't miss it.”
If Old Harry wants any work done, you may be sure
he'll find the means."
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Al-
mighty made 'em to match the men.?
Hetty's no better than a peacock, as ’ud strut about
on the wall, and spread its tail when the sun shone if
all the folks i’ the parish was dying.?
I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i’ the dairy,
an' wonder what she's come after.?
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 other folks,
and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your chil-
dren as you go along. ... It's more than flesh and
blood ’ull bear sometimes, to be toiling and striving,
and up early and down late, and hardly sleeping a


ADAM BEDE.
65
wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese
may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or tı.
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.
It's allays the way wi' them meek-faced people; you
may's well pelt a bag o’ feathers as talk to 'em.
Wi' them three gells 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'.?
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.
I have nothing to say again' Craig, on'y it is a pity
he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched differ-
ent.
I'd sooner ha' brewin' day an’ washin' day together
than one o' these pleasurin' days. There's no work
so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly
knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin'


ADAM BEDE.
67
known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought
before me, and I hear their voices and see them look
and move almost plainer than I ever did when 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 my 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 different
as can be 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 ease.3
I've noticed it often among my own people around
Snowfield, 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 best.3
Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb


68
ADAM BEDE.
things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a troubki
to 'em 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; O 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 off: God
enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us
strength and peace.3
The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and
sorrow of this world — that was what lay heavy on his
heart — and that is the cross we shall share with him,
that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we


ADAM BEDE.
69
would have any part in that Divine Love which is one
with his sorrow.'
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
- infinite 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 off. It is not the spirit only that
tells me this -I see it in the whole work and word of
the gospel. Is there 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 BEDE..
Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better
than you did a fortnight ago; and I'll tell you 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 'em
over in your own heads, and keep your thoughts fixed
on 'em. 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 bis
heart in learning figures would make sums for hiin-
self, and work 'em in his head: when he sat at his
shoemaking, he'd count his stitches by fives, and then
put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and
then see how much money he could get in an hour;


ADAM BEDE.
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
Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding,
nagging woman. They go on with the same thing
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. 4
You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as
well as in figures.
No man can be wise on an empty stomach.4


72
ADAM BEDE.
As for age, what that's worth depends on the
quality o' the liquor.
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be
patient.
College mostly makes people like bladders — just
good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into
'em.
If you trust a man, let him be a bachelor - let him
be a bachelor.
I daresay she's like the rest of the women — thinks
two and two'll come to make five, if she cries and
bothers enough about it.*
These poor silly women-things — they've not the
sense to know it's no use denying what's proved.“
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 man what his thoughts are
before he knows 'em himself.
Mrs. Poyser's a terrible woman!- made of needles
- made of needles. But I stick to Martin - I shall
always stick to Martin. And he likes the needles,
God help him! He's a cushion made on purpose for
'em. ... I don't say th' apple isn't sound at the core;


ADAM BEDE.
but it sets my teeth on edge - it sets my teeth on
edge."
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 will 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 He 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 as he can in this life, hoping
to get quit of 'em forever in another — hoping to get
quit of 'em forever in another."
I like breakfast-time better than any other moment
in the day. No dust has settled on one's mind then,
and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.
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.
When what is good comes of age and is likely to
live, there is reason for rejoicing."
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.'
A man can never do anything at variance with his
own nature. He 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 few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.“


ADAM BEDE.
75
Consequences are unpitying. Our 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 fix our
minds on that certainty, instead of considering what
may be the elements of excuse for us.“
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 BEDE.
.
Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for
the love he had to her.” 6
Thee mustna undervally 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 He 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 fit
t' enter the kingdom o' God.
Eh! well, if the Methodies are 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.?
One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's
out o'taste.?
Eh, it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when
it's broke i' two.?
“Said?” nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on’y the men
as have to wait till folks say things afore they find 'em
out.?
Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in
the shape of a mastiff. You 'll never persuade me that
I can't tell what men are by their outsides. If I don't
like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like


ADAM BEDE.
77
him. I don't want to know people that look ugly and
disagreeable, any more 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, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a
bad smell.8
Eh, it's a poor look-out when th’ould foulks doesna
like the young uns.'
It isn't right for old nor young nayther to make a
bargain all o' their own side. What's good for one 's
good all round i’ the long run.º.
I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore
they know the difference atween a crab an'a apple;
but they may wait o'er long.'
I should be loath to leave th' old place, and the par-
ish where I was bred and born, and father afore me.
We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and
niver thrive again.'
END OF WADAM BEDE.”





THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
(79)





THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
JOURNEYING down the Rhone on a summer's day,
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-
(81)


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 martyrdom and
endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than
the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be
gathered and worn.
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow
borne willingly.
We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we
are companions in their danger.
Retribution may come from any voice : the hardest,
cruelest, 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 Raphael,
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.
“Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret
about by-and-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. We have all of us sobbed so piteously,
standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks,
when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some
strange piace; but we can no longer recall the poign-
ancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over
the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago.
Every one of those keen moments has left its trace,
and lives in us still, but such traces 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 wilfulness; 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-
fiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his


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 walking to St. Ogg's,
he 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 the shingles might soon be passed.
But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt
oť shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had
dwindled into narrowness.
Of those two young hearts Tom's suffered 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: he 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 fighting
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 : in-


THE MILL ON TIE FLOSS.
89
side the gates, the women with streaming hair and
uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world's
combat from afar, filling their long empty days with
memories and fears : outside, the men, in fierce strug-
gle with things divine and human, quenching memory
in the stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of
dread and even of wounds in the hurrying ardor of
action.
It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the
complexity introduced into the emotions by a high
state of civilization - the sight of a fashionably drest
female in grief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to
that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several
bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and
delicate ribbon-strings — what a long series of grada-
tions! In the enlightened child of civilization the
abandonment characteristic of grief 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 half-blinded by the mist of
tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through
a door-place, she might 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. Perceiving that
the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and
throws them languidly backward — a touching gesture,
indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in
future dry moments when cap-strings will once more
have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with


90
THE 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 are 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 with 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 earth
where the same flowers come up again every spring
that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat
lisping to ourselves on the grass - the same hips and
haws on the autumn hedge-rows — the same redbreasts
that we used to call “God's birds,” because they did
no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
91
that sweet monotony where everything is known, and
loved because it is known?
The wood I walk in on this mild May-day, with the
and the blue 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-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep
and delicate fibres 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 things
as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the
language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable
associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left
behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-
hladed 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 own personality: we accepted and loved
it as we accepted our own sense of existence and our
own 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:


92
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
and is not the striving after something better and
better in our surroundings, the grand characteristic
that distinguishes man from the brute - or, to satisfy
a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes
the British man from the foreign brute? But heaven
knows where that striving might lead us, if our affec-
tions had not a trick of twining round those old in-
ferior thingsif the loves and sanctities of our life had
no deep immovable roots in memory. One's delight
in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage
of a hedge-row bank, as a more gladdening sight than
the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the
softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable pref-
erence to a nursery-gardener, or to any of those
severely regulated 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 present sensibil-
ities to form and color, but the long companion of my
existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys
were vivid.
We are all apt to believe what the world believes
about us.
A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
To minds strongly marked by the positive and neg-
ative qualities that create severity - strength of will,


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
93
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 as 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 in through the eye - however it may
come, these minds will give it a habitation : it is soine-
thing to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill
up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose
on others with the authority of conscious right : it is
at once a staff 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 by 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 horse, 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 ON THE FLOSS.
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself
under the appearance of openness, so that simple
people think they can see through her quite well, and
all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of
their confident prophecies. Under these average boy-
ish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the
gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible
purposes, some of her most unmodifiable 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 efficacy,
and must accept the sway of a passion against which
he had struggled as a trespass, is one for which we
have no master-key that will fit 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 checked
and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special
circumstances that mark the individual lot.
All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive
repugnance to the men of maxims, because such
people early discern that the mysterious complexity
of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that
to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to
repress all the divine promptings and inspirations
that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
95
the man of maxims is the popular representative of
the minds that are guided in their 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.
If people are to quarrel often, it follows as a corol-
lary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond
certain limits.
We perhaps never detect how much of our social
demeanor is inade 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 the wrong scent; and sa-
gacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from
distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in
view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary
game. Plotting covetousness, and deliberate contriy-
ance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere
abundant bnt in the world of the dramatist : they


96
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
demand too intense a mental action for many of our
fellow parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy
enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without
taking so much trouble : we can do it by lazy acqui-
escence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for
which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neu-
tralized by small extravagancies, by maladroit flat-
teries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live
from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family
of immediate desires — we do little else than snatch a
morsel to satisfy 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 us — a voice that will
thrill and awaken, when it has been used to touch
deep-lying fibres.
So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men
have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffu-
sive is human suffering that even justice makes its
victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does
not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited
pain.
It was one of those dangerous moments when speech
is at once sincere and deceptive — when feeling, rising
high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which
are never reached again.


98
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
curves down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest,
almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A
woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two
thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of
it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps
loving y the time-worn marble of a headless trunk.
Maggie's was such an arm 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. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without in-
fluence over her husband. No 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 his son by sending
him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is, the
enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's undivided
neglect; the other is, the endurance of the reverend
gentleman's undivided attention.


102
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a
wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily
comes to persuade himself 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-
noticingly on the road every day, have their tragedy
too; but it is of that unwept, hidden sort, that goes on
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 suddenly hard
to then, under the dreariness of a home where the
morning brings no promise with it, and where the un-
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 passion, though it may be a death that finds
only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to
which tenacity of position is a law of life — they can
never flourish again, after a single wrench : and there
are certain human beings to whom predominance is a
law of life — they can only sustain humiliation so long
as they can refuse to believe in it, and, in their own
conception, predominate still.
If boys and men are to be welded together in the
glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
103
.
that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when
the heat dies out.
O 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 à Kempis),
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 things 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 time 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 ON THE FLOSS.
of small things with great; for does not science tell
us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment
of a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the
greatest? In natural science, I have understood, there
is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of
relations, and to which every single object suggests a
vast sum of conditions. It is surely the same with the
observation of human life.
There is something sustaining in the very agitation
that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an
acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excite-
ment which is transient strength. It is in the slow,
changed life that follows — in the time when sorrow
has become stale, and has no longer an emotive inten-
sity that counteracts its pain - in the time when day
follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is
a dreary routine; - it is then that despair threatens ;
it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is
felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned
secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance
the nature of satisfaction.
This inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself,
belonged to the industrious men of business of a for-
mer generation, who made their fortunes slowly, al.
most as the tracking of the fox belongs to the harrier
- it constituted them a "race,” which is nearly lost
in these days of rapid money-getting, when lavishness
comes close on the back of want. In old-fashioned
times, an “independence” was hardly ever made with-


THE MILL ON TIE FLOSS.
105
out a litle miserliness as a condition, and you 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 silvery
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
tenor will 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 has 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 in
a large bouquet.
Mrs. Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted
woman: she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who


106
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a pre-
occupied air when 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 office 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 becoming creditable meet with a similar cordial-
ity oi recognition, which, in its fine freedom from the
coercion of any antecedents, suggests 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 great need of un-
usual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely
uncomfortable without them: but the theory that un-
usual virtues spring by a direct consequence out of
personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in
severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The
temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I


THE MILL ON TIE FLOSS.
107
fancy they only bear the same relation to those of
ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where
the delights are 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 fit. I suppose it's because I niver went
to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother
for. I says, “You 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.”)
I think the more on't when Mr. Tom says a thing,
because his tongue doesn't overshoot him as mine
does. Lors! I'm no better nor a tilted bottle, I aren't
- I can't stop mysen when once I begin.'
Dr. Kenn was at me to know what I did of a Sun-
day, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was
upo' the travel three parts o' the Sundays - an' then
I'm so used to bein' on my legs, I can't sit so long on
end -- "an’ lors, sir,” says I, “a packman can do wi’ a
small 'lowance o' church: it tastes strong,” says I;
"there's no call to lay 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'stead o goin' into
these new-fangled shops, where there's half-a-dozen
fine gents wi’ their chins propped up wi' a stiff 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 are squeezed out on him, whether he 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.'
See 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 five 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 the
dark thack, to make a bit of a blaze for 'em. Lors,
it's as good as a fire, to look at such a hankicher.'
Mumps doesn't mind a bit o' cheating, when it's
them skinflint women, as haggle an'haggle, an' 'ud
like to get their flannel for nothing, an' 'ud niver ask


THE MILL ON TIE FLOSS.
109
theirselves how I got my dinner (ut 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 no
varmint to come over but them haggling women.'
Oh, it is difficult - life is very difficult! It seems
right to me sometimes that we 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 ought to belong to each other.
But I see — I feel it is not so now: there are things
we must renounce in life; some of us must resign
love. Many things are difficult and dark to me;
but I see 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.
I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a
wilful sin between myself and God.?
You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings
and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else


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THE MILL ON TIE FLOSS.
all pledges might be broken, when there was no out-
ward penalty. There would be no such thing as faith-
fulness.?
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.
If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie?
We should have no law but the inclination of the
moment.
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 go on without effort, when I am
filled with music. At other times one is conscious of
carrying a weight.”
If we use common words on a great occasion, they
are the more striking, because they are felt at once to
have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-
day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.?
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I
think they carry their comfort about with them.”
It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity


112
THE MILL ON TIE 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.?
I'll tell you how I got 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
lads 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 fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way I
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 firms in St. Ogg's.3


THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
113
I want Tom to know figures, and write like print,
and see into things quick, and know what folks mean,
and how to wrap things up in words as aren't action-
able. It's an uncommon fine thing, 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
wonderful'st thing as I picked the mother because she
wasn't o'er 'cute — bein' 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 you see 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 lads and 'cute wenches, till it's
like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an
uncommon puzzlin' thing. 4
It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations.
No character becomes strong in that way.
A feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you
should care to keep it."
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 great-


114
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
est 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 effect would last, I might
be capable of heroisms."
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 mediæval literature,
and modern literature; I flutter all ways, and fly in
none.
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 be beautiful and good, and we
must hunger after them. How can we ever be satis-
fied without them until our feelings are deadened? I
delight in fine pictures - I long to be able to paint
such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I
want. That is pain to me, and always will be pain,
until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes.•


THE MILL 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: he would tremble to see it con-
fided to other hands; he would never believe that it
could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty
it bears for him."
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.“
I can't think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that
makes you look best in shabby clothes; though you
really must have a new dress now. But 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.
Now, if I were to put anything shabby on, I should be
quite unnoticeable — 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
he must use the same words with which all the world
declines a disagreeable invitation - don't you think so,
Miss Tulliver??


116
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
Well, it will not go on much longer, for the bazaar
is to take place on Monday week.6
Thank heaven! Kenn himself said the other day,
that he 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. Ogg's
has not got force of motive enough to build and endow
schools without calling in the force of folly.?
END OF "THE MILL ON THE FLOSS."


SILAS MARNER.
(117)





SILAS MARNER.
121
To the peasants of old times, the world outside their
own direct experience was a region of vagueness and
mystery: to their untravelled 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 inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in
the commission of a crime; especially if he had any
reputation for knowledge, or showed ány skill in handi-
craft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that
difficult 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 overwise or clever - at least, not beyond such a
matter as knowing the signs of the weather; 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, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings
when once the actions have become a lie.
The sense of security more frequently springs from


SILAS MARNER.
- 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 are 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 who
reach middle age without the clear perception that life
never can be thoroughly joyous : under the vague dul-
ness of the 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 rise one above another like nursery plants, it
sees a black care hovering behind every one of them,
and thinks the impulses by which men abandon free-
dom, and seek for ties, are surely nothing but a brief
madness.
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and
wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a


124
SILAS MARNER.
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 consol ition 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 film, 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 are likely to fall gratingly on
susceptible feelings.
I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to
comfort our neighbors with our words is, that our
good-will gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, 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
are 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 je, 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 board, showed them no purpose beyond it.


126
SILAS MARNER.
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 off 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-gazing calm which makes us older human beings,
with 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 glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or
the bending trees over a silent 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
definiteness that comes over coarse features from that
transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of car
for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibra-
tions through the heavy mortal frame-as if “beauty
born of murmuring sound” had passed into the face
of the listener.


SILAS MARNER.
127
To people accustomed to reason about the forms in
which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it
is difficult 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 difficulty associates the ideas of power and
benignity. A shadowy 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 offered him.
“No,” 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 niver too late to turn over


128
SILAS MARNER.
a new leaf, and if you've niver had no church, there's
no telling the good it 'ull do you. For I 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. Macey gives out -- and · Mr.
Crackenthorp saying good words, and more partic'lar
on Sacramen' 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 ’ull be worse nor we are, and come short o'
Theirn.
It allays comes 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."
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 Marner - 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 MARNER.
129
bigger nor what we can know-I feel it i' my own
inside as it must be so.'
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 Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the
rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there being a
rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me."
If you can't bring your mind to frighten the child
off 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 are 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."
It drives me past patience, that way o' the men -
always wanting and wanting, and never easy with
what they've got: they can't sit comfortable in their
chairs when they've neither ache nor pain, but either
they 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.
0, I know the way o' wives; they set one on to


130
SILAS MARNER.
abuse their husbands, and then they turn round on
one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell 'em.?
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 see 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.”
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, I believe.?
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
There's reasons in things as nobody knows on-
that's pretty much what I've made out; though some
folks are so wise, they'll find you fifty reasons straight


SILAS MARNER.
131
off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em
in the corner, and they niver see 't.3
Breed is stronger than pasturc.
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.
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 off and putting off, the trees have
been growing - it's too late now.5
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
END OF “SILAS MARNER.”





ROMOLA.
(133)


136
ROMOLA.
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 awe
of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious
pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under
Christianity, is still felt by the mass 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 the 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 feeling.
"It is good," sing the old Eumenides, in Æschylus,
" that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul,
forcing it into wisdom — good that inen should carry
a threatening shadow 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 duty and love have united in one stream and
made a common force.
The exhaustion consequent on violent emotion is apt
to bring a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its cause.
We are so made, almost all of us, that the false
seeming which we have thought of with painful shrink-
ing when beforehand in our solitude it has urged itself
on us as a necessity, will possess our muscles and
move our lips as if nothing but that 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 immediate power of some strong unques-
tioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth
of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities be-
yond its own horizon.


138
ROMOLA.
Every 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 exquisiteness
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 beings; and if there is any
love of which they are not widowed, it must be the


ROMOLA.
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 sympathetic youth,
as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of
the gods in fair weather: what is she to believe in, if
not in this vision woven from within?
No 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 affection or


ROMOLA.
rence has been already enfeebled by the strain of
fated 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 has lost her crown. The deepest
secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself
to her, and then forever passed her by.
All minds, except such as are delivered from doubt
by dulness of sensibility, must be subject to a recur.
ring conflict where the many-twisted conditions of life
have forbidden the fulfilment of a bond. For in strict-
ness there is no replacing 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 lets his son and daughter pass through
the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacri-
fice: tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has its dan-
ger too, and is apt to be timid and sceptical towards
the larger aims without which life cannot rise into
religion.


ROMOLA.
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 an 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 own completeness.
Wherever affection can spring, it is like the green
leaf and the blossom - pure, and breathing purity,
whatever soil it may grow in.
Life never seems so clear and easy as 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 Romola walked, often in weariness, among the


*
143
ROMOLA.
Hard speech between those who have loved is
hideous in 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 ears, who is so blest as
to remember the yearnings he 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 offered him
an immediate purpose.
Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human


144
ROMOLA.
souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by
the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually
determines character.
Tito had an innate love of reticence — let us say a
talent for it - which acted as other impulses do, with-
out any conscious motive, and, like all people to whom
concealment is easy, he would now and then conceal
something which had as little the nature of a secret as
the fact that he had seen a flight 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 worship
paid of old to a great nature-goddess, who was not
all-knowing, but whose life and power were something
deeper and more primordial than knowledge.
Perhaps of all sombre paths that on which we go
back, after treading it with a strong resolution, is the
one that most severely tests the fervor of renuncia-
tion.
. Life is so complicated a game that the devices of
skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-


148
ROMOLA.
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, floods every idea with emotion and tends
towards contemplative ecstacy, alternated in him with
a keen perception of outward facts and 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 sense
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, preëminence 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.
145
Impelled partly by the spiritual necessity that 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 " Choose
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 influence of party
interests: it was a plan that 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
sublimest ond: the objects towards which he felt him-
self working had always the same moral magnificence.
He 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
Every hidden weakness of his soul, he could say to


150
ROMOLA.
his importunate judges : “Do not wonder if it seems
to you that I have told but few things; for my pur-
poses were few and great."
· The real force of demonstration for Girolamo 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, and 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 supreme
and righteous Ruler became one with the faith in a
speedy divine interposition that would punish and
reclaim.
The worst drop of bitterness can 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 felt, “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 himself as a martyr.
The idea of martyrdom had been to him a passion
dividing the dream of the future with the triumph of
beholding his work achieved. And now, in place of
both, had come a resignation which he called by no
glorifying name.


ROMOLA.
151
But therefore he 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
greatness — 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
he 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 massive
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 that 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
gratified low egoism, tickled gossiping curiosity, and
fascinated timorous superstition. His need of per-
sonal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical inter-
pretations of the Scriptures, his enigmatic 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


152
ROMOLA.
subjection of selfish interests to the general good,
which he had in common with the greatest of man-
kind. But for the mass of his audience all the preg-
nancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of
supernatural claims, in his denunciatory visions, in the
false certitude which gave 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
keep the mastery. The effect was inevitable. No man
ever struggled to retain power over a mixed multitude
without suffering 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 fitted to check the judgments
of facile knowingness than in Girolamo Savonarola;
but we can give him a reverence that needs no shut-
ting of the eyes to fact, if we regard his life as a drama
in which there were great inward modifications accom-
panying the outward changes. And up to this period,
when his more direct action on political affairs had
only just begun, it is probable that his imperious need
of ascendency had burned undiscernibly in the strong
flame of his zeal for God and man.
It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out
for sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots, and
give the offering a false show of unblemished white-
ness. Let us fling away the chalk, and boldly say,-
the victim is spotted, but it is not therefore in vain
that his mighty heart is laid on the altar of men's
highest hopes.


ROMOLA.
153
Be not offended, bel giovane; I am but repeating
what I hear in my shop: as you may perceive, my
eloquence is simply the cream which I skim off my
clients' talk. IIeaven forbid I should fetter my im-
partiality by entertaining an opinion."
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. But now-oime! I carry
my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!'
We Florentines have liberal ideas about speech, and
consider that an instrument which can flatter and prom-
ise so cleverly as the tongue, must have been partly
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.'
The cat couldn't eat her mouse if she didn't catch it
alive, and Bratti couldn't relish gain if it had no taste
of a bargain.”
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
aratorem.” 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.


156
ROMOLA.
on that end, and not on what will happen to you
because of it. And remember, if you were to choose
something lower, and make it the rule of your life to
seek your own pleasure and escape from what is dis-
agreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it
would be 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
Blindness acts like a dam, sending the streams of
thought backward along the already-travelled channels
and hindering the course onward.
It is too often the “palma sine pulvere,” the prize of
glory without the dust of the race, that young ambition
covets. But what says the Greek? “In the morning
of life, work; in the mid-day, give counsel; in the
evening, pray." 5
In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its
applause.5
When the towers fall, you know it is an ill business
for the small nest-builders.6
:
Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they
are strongest for things a long way off.?
I enter into no plots, but I never forsake my colors.


ROMOLA.
159
(insurrection): I say, never do you plan a romor; you
may as well try to fill 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. I find 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
that no infamy can dull them - cheeks that will rise
from a murder and not look haggard. 10
Nello, thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when
the Arno's full — whether there's grist or not. 10
Holy Madonna! It seems as if widows had nothing
to do now but to buy their coffins and think it a thou-
sand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying
themselves a little when they've got their hands free
for the first time. 11
Let Romola muffle herself as she will, every one
wants to see what there is under her veil, for she has
that way of walking like a procession."
What I say is, we've got to reverence the saints,
and not to set ourselves up as if we could be like them,
else life would be unbearable.11


160
ROMOLA.
There has been no great people without processions,
and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved
by them to anything but contempt, is like the puddle
that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed
by. 12
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has
been well tempted. 12
I remember our Antonio getting bitter about his
chiselling and enamelling of these metal things, 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 their teeth at
each other, 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
END OF "ROMOLA."


FELIX HOLT.
(161)





FELIX HOLT.
THERE is seldom any wrong-doing which does not
carry along with it some downfall of blindly-climbing
hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some quickly.
satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of
old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woful
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 they 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 often a mere whisper in the roar of hurry-
ing existence. There are glances of hatred that stab
and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man
or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept
secret by the sufferer - committed to no sound except
that 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 ear.
(163)


FELIX HOLT.
165
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 difficult.
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 has failed, and that the jet of light
is thrown entirely on his misdoings.
The homage of a man may be delightful until he asks
straight for love, by which a woman renders homage.
Even the flowers and the pure sunshine, and the
sweet waters of Paradise would have been spoiled for
a young heart, if the bowered walks had been haunted
by an Eve gone gray with bitter memories of an Adam
who had complained, “The woman ... she gave me
of the tree, and I did eat.” And many of us know
how, even in our childhood, some blank, discontented
face on the background of our home has marred our
summer mornings. Why was it, when the birds were
singing, when the fields 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?
There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-


168
FELIX HOLT.
A mind in the grasp 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.
A man with a definite will and an energetic person-
ality acts as a sort of flag to draw and bind together
the foolish units of a mob.
In a mind of any nobleness, a lapse into transgres-
sion against an object still regarded as supreme, issues
in a new and purer devotedness, chastised by humility
and watched over by a passionate regret. So it was
with that ardent spirit which animated the little body
of Rufus Lyon. Once in his life he had been blinded,
deafened, hurried along by rebellious impulse; he
had gone astray after his own desires, and had let the
fire die out on the altar: and as the true penitent,
hating his self-besotted error, asks from all coming life
duty instead of joy, and service instead of ease, so
Rufus was perpetually on the watch lest he should
ever again postpone to some private affection a great
public opportunity which to him was equivalent to a
command.
To the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain
for those who sink from the ranks of the heroes into
the crowd for whom the heroes fight and die.
Very slight words and deeds may have a sacra-
mental efficacy, if we can cast our self-love behind us,


FELIX HOLT.
169
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 new life; that the mind
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
great claims which are the image of our own need.
It is in the nature of exasperation gradually to con-
centrate itself. The sincere antipathy of a dog towards
cats in general, necessarily takes the form of indignant
barking at the neighbor's black cat which makes daily
trespass; the bark at imagined cats, though a fre-
quent exercise of the canine mind, is yet comparatively
feeble.
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in
which there is much agreement, much disputation, and
yet more personal liking.
It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the
back-ground, that mothers have a self larger than their
maternity, and that when their sons have become taller
than themselves, and are gone from them to college
or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time
which are not filled with praying for their boys, read-
ing old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are
attending to their shirt-buttons.
The stronger will always rule, say some, with an air
of confidence which is like a lawyer's flourish, forbid-


170
FELIX HOLT.
ding exceptions or additions. But what is strength.
Is it blind wilfulness that sees no terrors, no many-
linked consequences, no bruises and wounds of those
whose cords it tightens? Is it the narrowness of a
brain that conceives no needs differing from its own,
and looks to no results beyond the bargains of to-day;
that tugs with emphasis for every small purpose, and
thinks it weakness to exercise the sublime power of
resolved renunciation? There is a sort of subjection
which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love;
and strength is often only another name for willing
bondage to irremediable weakness.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they
could repress the speech they know to be useless —
nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.
In this way poor women, whose power lies solely in
their influence, make themselves like music out of tune,
Under protracted ill every living creature will find
something that makes a comparative ease, and even
when life seems woven of pain, will convert the fainter
pang into a desire.
The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight,
blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of
the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range
for self to move in : but in after years it can only con-
tinue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived


FELIX HOLT.
171
love — that is, by much suppression of self, and power
of living in the experience of another.
What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk
below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the
backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.
We are very much indebted to such a linking of
events as makes a doubtful action look wrong.
Harold was one of those people to whose presence
in the room you could not be indifferent: if you do not
hate or dread them, you must find the touch of their
hands, nay, their very shadows, agreeable.
Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in
a minority of a minority amongst our own party :-
very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no
silver spoon in their mouths — how would they get
nourished and fed ?
Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when
we are not athirst for information, but to be quite fair
we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal
due to the lack of matter. Specch is often barren;
but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full
nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark,
may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg;
and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to
announce but that addled delusion.


172
FELIX HOLT.
A diffident man likes the idea of doing something
remarkable, which will create belief in him without
any immediate display of brilliancy. Celebrity may
blush and be silent, and win a grace the more.
That talkative maiden, Rumor, though in the inter-
est of art she is figured as a youthful winged beauty
with flowing garments, soaring above the heads of
men, and breathing world-thrilling news through a
gracefully-curved trumpet, is in fact a very old maid,
who puckers her silly face by the fireside, and really
does no more than chirp a wrong guess or a lame story
into the ear of a fellow-gossip; all the rest of the work
attributed to her is done by the ordinary working of
those passions against which men pray in the Litany,
with the help of a plentiful stupidity against which we
have never yet had any authorized form of prayer.
Quick souls have their intensest life in the first an-
ticipatory sketch of what may or will be, and the pur-
suit of their wish is the pursuit of that paradisiacal
vision which only impelled them, and is left farther
and farther behind, vanishing forever even out of hope
in the moment which is called success.
There is no private life which has not been deter-
mined by a wider public life, from the time when the
primeval milk-maid had to wander with the wanderings
of her clan, because the cow she milked was one of
a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even in
that conservatory existence where the fair Camellia is


FELIX HOLT.
173
sighed for by the noble young Pine-apple, neither of
thein needing to care about the frost or rain outside,
there is a nether apparatus of hot-water pipes liable to
cool down on a strike of the gardeners or a scarcity of
coal.
I have known persons who have been suspected of
undervaluing gratitude, and excluding it from the list -
of virtues; but on closer observation it has been seen
that, if they have never felt grateful, it has been for
want of an opportunity; and that, far from despising
gratitude, they regard it as the virtue most of all in-
cumbent — on others towards them.
At the last moment there is always a reason not
existing before — namely, the impossibility of further
vacillation.
Perhaps the moment of most diffusive pleasure from
public speaking is that in which the speech ceases and
the audience can turn to commenting on it. The one
speech, sometimes uttered under great responsibility
as to missiles and other consequences, has given a text
to twenty speakers who are under no responsibility.
Even in the days of duelling a man was not challenged
for being a bore, nor does this quality apparently hin-
der him from being much invited to dinner, which is
the great index of social responsibility in a less bar-
barous age.
We hardly allow enough in common life for the re-


174
FELIX HOLT.
sults of that enkindled passionate enthusiasm which,
under other conditions, makes world-famous deeds.
Non omnia grandior ætas quæ fugiamus habet, says
the wise goddess : you have not the best of it in all
things, O youngsters ! the elderly man has his enviable
memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a
long journey in mid-spring or autumn on the outside
of a stage-coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet
through a tube, by atmospheric pressure from Win-
chester to Newcastle : that is a fine result to have
among our hopes; but the slow old-fashioned 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 0! 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 hers which breaks through formulas too rigorously
urged on men by daily practical needs, makes one of
her most precious influences; she is the added im-
pulse that shatters the stiffening crust of cautious
experience. Her inspired ignorance gives a sublimity
to actions so incongruously simple, that otherwise
they would make men smile.


FELIX HOLT.
177
sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall un-
seen and on barrenness.
M.- It was but yesterday you spoke him well--
You've changed your mind so soon?
.N.
Not I-'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."
Oh, sir, 'twas that mixture of spite and over-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;
No dough is dried once more to meal,
No crock new-shapen by the wheel;
You can't turn curds to milk again,
Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then;
And having tasted stolen honey,
You can't buy innocence for money."
'Tis grievous, that with all amplification of travel
12


178
FELIX HOLT.
both by sea and land, a man can never separate him-
self from his past history."
No man believes that many-textured knowledge and
skill — as a just idea of the solar system, or the power
of painting flesh, 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 and dispositions not to be wrought
by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of For-
tune's wheel for one on whose brow Time has written
legibly. 11
The devil tempts us not-. 'tis we tempt him,
Beckoning his skill with opportunity."
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. . . . How can polit-
ical freedom make us better, any more than a religion
we don't believe in, if people laugh and wink when
they see men abuse and defile it? And while public
opinion is what it is — while men have no better beliefs
about public duty — while corruption is not felt to be
a damning disgrace — while men are not ashamed in
Parliament and out of it to make public questions
which concern the welfare of millions a mere screen


FELIX HOLT.
179
for their own petty private ends, - I say no fresh
scheme of voting will much mend our condition. For,
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 five-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."
Where's the good of pulling at such a tangled skein
as this electioneering trickery? As long as three-
fourths of the men in this country see nothing in an
election but self-interest, and nothing in self-interest
but some form of greed, one might as well try to purify
the proceedings of the fishes, and say to a hungry cod-
fish — "My good friend, abstain; don't goggle your
eyes so, or show such a stupid gluttonous mouth, or
think the little fishes are worth nothing except in rela-
tion to your own inside.” He'd be open to no argu-
ment short of crimping him.'


180
FELIX HOLT.
of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it
sha'n't be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may
tell me I can't alter the world that there must be a
certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, and if I
don't lie and filch somebody else will. Well, then,
somebody else shall, for I won't.'
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 say 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 chiefly mis-
erable, and his life had come to help some one who
needed it. He would be the man who had the most
powers and the fewest selfish wants. But I'm not up
to the level of what I see to be best.'
I would never choose to withdraw myself from the
labor and common burden of the world; but I do
choose to withdraw myself 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 push and the scramble in the long-
run. But I care for the people who live now and will
not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I pre-
fer going shares with the unlucky.'
Thousands of men have wedded poverty' because they


FELIX HOLT.
181
expect to go to heaven for it; I don't expect to go to
heaven for 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 may 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 reach. It is held
reasonable enough to toil for the fortunes of a family,
though it may turn to imbecility in the third genera-
tion. I choose a family with more chances in it."
It is just because I'm a very ambitious fellow, with
very hungry passions, wanting a great deal to satisfy
me, that I have chosen to give up what people call
worldly good. At least that has 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 mechanical 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 hate to be.
I'm determined never to go about making my face sim-
pering or solemn, and telling professional lies for
profit; or to get tangled in affairs 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 with. I should become
everything that I see 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


182
FELIX HOLT.
none at all - perhaps for the sake of two parlors, a
rank eligible for the church-wardenship, a discontented
wife, and several unhopeful children.'
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 the purpose he sees to be best. As to just
the amount of result he may see from his particular
work — that's a tremendous uncertainty: the unive se
has not been arranged for the 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 effects at
their minimum, but I'd rather have the minimum of
effect, if it's of the sort I care for, than the maximum
of effect I don't care for a lot of fine things that are
not to my taste - and if they were, the conditions of
holding them while the world is what it is, are such as
would jar on me like grating metal.'
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when
it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.'
I should 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 still less what he can drive
into the skulls of a pence-counting, parcel-tying gen-
eration, such as mostly fill your chapels.'
There are some people one must wish to judge one
truly. Not to wish it would be mere hardness."


FELIX HOLT.
* 183
A bachelor's children are always young: they're im-
mortal children - always lisping, waddling, helpless,
and with a chance of turning out good.'
A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small
airs, and small notions, about as applicable to the
business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing
of a forest."
I can't bear to see you going the way of the 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. That's the way those who
might do better spend their lives for nought- get
checked in every great effort-- toil with brain and limb
for things that 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 if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry.'
I wonder whether the subtle measuring of forces
will ever come to measuring 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 great aims of
his life.
Felix. — I don't measure any force by the negations
in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one be-
cause it is more given to idle suffering than to benef-


184
FELIX HOLT.
icent activity. That's what your favorite gentlemen
do, of the Byronic-bilious style.
Esther. – I don't admit that those are my favorite
gentlemen.
Felix. — I've heard you defend them- gentlemen like
your Rénés, who have no particular talent for the finite,
but a general sense that the infinite is the right thing
for them. They might as well boast of nausea as a
proof of a strong inside.
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 fight against authority: there is no great
religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in
the beginning.
I have had much puerile blame cast upon me, be-
cause I have uttered such names as Brougham and
Wellington in the pulpit. Why not Wellington as
well as Rabshakeh? and why not Brougham as well as
Balaam? Does God know less of men than He did
in the days of Hezekiah 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 was raised in Israel by
each man's waiting to say "amen” till his neighbors
had said amen? Do you think there will ever be 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?” ?
Play 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 see our way and
keep our torch steady in this dim labyrinth: to whirl
the torch and dazzle the eyes of our fellow-seekers is
a poor daring, and may end in total darkness.
Esther. - This will not be a grief to you, I hope,
father? You think it is better that I should go?
Rufus. — Nay, 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 too
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 are 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
who endures 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 Sacrifice are
wider than our utmost charity. I once believed other-
wise — but not now, not now.
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 thrust into nar-
rower room.”
Esther. — But that must be the best life, father.
That must be the best life.
Rufus. — What life, my dear child?
Esther. - Why, that where one bears and does every-


FELIX HOLT.
187
thing because of some great and strong feeling – so
that this and that in one's circumstances don't signify.
Rufus. — Yea, verily : but the feeling that should be
thus supreme is devotedness to the Divine Will.2
Even as in music, where all obey and 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.
The very truth hath a color from the disposition of
the utterer.3
Where a great weight has to be moved, we require
not so much selected instruments as abundant horse-
power.2
There are 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.?
The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher
rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.2
The mind that is too ready at contempt and repro-


FELIX HOLT.
189
I look upon it, life is like our game at whist, when
Banks and his wife come 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.
Why, if I've only got some orange flowers to candy,
I shouldn't like to die till I see 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 watching. -
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.
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 coun-
try, he'll want to keep things square. Where Jack
isn't safe, Tom's in danger. 5


190
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 with 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. “We 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.“
Putty has said to me, “ Johnson, bear in mind there
are two ways 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.
A man who puts a non-natural strained sense on a
promise is no better than a robber."
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.8
None o' your shooting for me- it's two to one
you'll miss. Snaring's more fishing-like. You bait
your hook, and if it isna the fishes' good-will to come,
that's nothing again' the sporting genelman. And
that's what I say by sharing.'


MIDDLEMAROH.
(193)





MIDDLEM ARCH.
MANNERS must be very marked indeed before they
cease to be interpreted by pre-conceptions either con-
fident or distrustful.
A man's mind — what there is of it- has always the
advantage of being masculine, as the smallest birch-
tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,
and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir
James might not have originated this estimate; but a
kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with
a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.
Sometimes, indeed, Celia had reflected that Dodo
would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not
her way of looking at things; and stified 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
MIDDLEMARCH.
this liberal allowance of conclusions, which has facil.
itated marriage under the difficulties of civilization.
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness
the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?
Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the un-
gauged 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 up 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 Sindbad 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 zigzags, 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 find her ideal of life in
village charities, patronage of the humbler clergy, the
perusal of “Female Scripture Characters," unfolding
the private experience of Sara under the Old Dispen-
sation, and Dorcas under the New, and the care of her
soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir — with a
background of prospective marriage to a man who, if


MIDDLE MARCH
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
think her very winning and lovely — fit hereafter to be
an eternal cherub, and if it were not doctrinally wrong
to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than a
squirrel.
Mr Brooke 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 ideal life; the radiance of
her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that
came within its level.
It had been Celia's nature when a child never to


198
MIDDLEMARCH.
quarrel with any one - only to observe with wouder
that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-
cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat’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.
fects 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 find ourselves making interpretations which turn
out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens
you 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 for these victims while the swal-
lower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this
way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to
Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of
minute causes producing what may be called thought
and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she
needed.


MIDDLEMARCA.
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 Rectory : such people were no part of God's de-
sign in making the world; and their accent was an
affliction 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 Tipton and Freshitt, and for
anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive
irregularity.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disap-
pointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep
back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and
in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, 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 on any partic-
ular occasion.


MIDDLEMARCII.
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 is the report of
his own consciousness about his doings or capacity :
with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily
labors; what fading of hopes, or what decper fixity of
self-delusion the years are marking off within him; and
with what spirit he 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
must be our want of room for him, since we refer him
to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it
is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the
utmost there, however little he may have got from us.
Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own world;
if he was liable to think that others were providentially
made for him, and especially to consider them in the
light of their fitness for the author of a “Key to all
Mythologies,” this trait is not quite alien to us, and,
like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims
some of our pity.
All Dorothea's eagerness for acquirement lay within
that full current of sympathetic motive in which her
ideas and impulses were habitually swept along. She
did not want to deck herself with knowledge – to wear
it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action;


204
MIDDLEMARCU.
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-tone, and
sometimes implied that it was inconsistent with 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.
Bulstrode 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 figure, disliked this
kind of moral lantern turned on them. If you 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, filial-hearted 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-
icus diseases. The evidence of his cleverness was of
the higher intuitive order, lying in his lady patients'
immovable conviction, and was unassailable by any


206
MIDDLEMARCH.
and his garments than of anything which was to give
him a title to everlasting fame: each 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 final companionship with
the immortals.
One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property
which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.
We are 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 are
never weary of describing what King James called a
woman's “makdom and her fairnesse,” 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. And
not seldom the catastrophe is wound up with the other
passion, sung by the Troubadours. For 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 their 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 fit to be


208
MIDDLEMARCH.
Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative
on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent
drawing or cheap narration : reports of very poor talk
going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer com-
ing down on his bad errands as a large, ugly man with
bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or ex-
aggerations of wantonness that seemed to reflect life
in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration
Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous com-
pared with the imagination that reveals subtile actions
inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked 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 space. He, for his
part, had tossed away all cheap inventions where ig-
norance finds itself able and at ease: 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 those minute processes
which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible
thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of
anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and
transition which determine the growth of happy or
unhappy consciousness.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving !
The Vicar himself seemed to wear rather a changed
aspect, as most men do when acquaintances made else.


MIDDLEMARCH.
209
where see them for the first time in their own homes;
some indeed showing like an actor of genial parts dis-
advantageously cast for the curmudgeon in a new
piece.
The Rector 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 affliction to our friends.
Many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out
among incongruities and left to "find their feet”
among them, while their elders go about their business.
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with
whose nature you are acquainted solely through the
brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks
called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of
married companionship, be disclosed as something
better or worse than what you have preconceived, but
will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it
would be astonishing to find how soon the change
is felt 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 we begin by knowing little and beliey-
ing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the
quantities.
In courtship everything is regarded as provisional
14


210
MIDDLEMARCA.
and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or
accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores
which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But
the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is
concentrated on the present. Having once embarked
on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be
aware that you make no way, and that the sea is not
within sight - that, in fact, you are exploring an en-
closed basin.
There is hardly any contact more depressing to a
young 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 glad that my presence has made any dif-
ference to you,” said Dorothea, who had a vivid mem-
ory of evenings in which she had supposed that Mr.
Casaubon's mind had gone too deep during the day to
be able to get to the surface again.
How far the judicious Hooker or any other hero of
erudition would have been the same at Mr. Casaubon's
time of life, she had no means of knowing, so that he
could not have the advantage of comparison; but her
husband's way of commenting on the strangely impres-
sive objects around them had begun to affect her with
a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the best inten-
tion of acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquit-
ting himself. What was fresh to her mind was worn
out to his; and such capacity of thought and feeling


MIDDLEMARCH.
211
as had ever been stimulated in him by the general life
of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried prepar-
ation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.
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 difficult, 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 yalue, 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 plash 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 made a
philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers, a
religion without the aid of theology. His early ambi-


212
MIDDLEMARCA.
tion 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 had been
chiefly his own teacher, he knew more of land, build-
ing, 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,
would not be acceptable in these advanced times. He
divided them into 6 business, politics, preaching, learn-
ing, and amusement.” He had nothing to say against
the last 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 fields. 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 darkness was a
slack workman. But there was no spirit of denial in
Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that
he was ready to accept any number of systems, like
any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously
interfere with the best land drainage, solid building,
correct measuring, and judicious boring (for coal). In


MIDDLEWARCII.
213
fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence.
Lydgate was as polite as he could be in his off-hand
way, but politeness in a man who has 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 humoral pathology or fibrous tissue : he
held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine
mind to adore a man's preëminence without too pre-
cise a knowledge of what it consisted in.
But Rosamond 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.


MIDDLEMARCH.
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 definiteness 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
refiect that the Almighty was watching him.
He was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy, with
small, furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander
temper, but thought himself much deeper than his
brother Peter; 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.
He 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 waistcoat 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 play with
his large seals. There was occasionally a little fierce-
ness in his demeanor, but it was directed chiefly against
false opinion, of which there is so much to correct in


216
MIDDLEMARCI.
the world that a man of some reading and experience
necessarily has his patience tried.
Dorothea liked her thoughts: a vigorous young mind,
not overbalanced by passion, 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 Featherstone, 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 more easily
believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentle-
man theoretically than by those who form the narrower
judgments based on his personal 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 his white handkerchief again with
a sense that in any case there would be affecting pas-
sages, and crying at funerals, however dry, was cus-
tomarily served up in lawn.
In warming himself at French social theories, Lydgate
had brought away no smell of scorching. We may
handle even extreme opinions with impunity while


218
MIDDLEMARCI.
ually advanced over the western fields beyond the
avenue of elms, the bare room had gathered within it
those memories of an inward life which fill the air as
with a cloud of good or bad angels, the invisible yet
active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our spiritual
falls. Dorothea had been so used to struggle for and
to find resolve in looking along the avenue toward the
arch of western light that the vision itself had gained
a communicating power. Even the pale stag seemed
to have reminding glances, and to mean mutely, “Yes,
we know.”
She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to
others — likely to tread in the wrong places, as Celia
had warned her; yet her blindness to whatever did not
lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the
side of precipices where vision would have been peril-
ous with fear.
When young ardor is set brooding over the concep-
tion of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start
forth with independent life, mastering ideal obstacles.
Even our own persons in the glass are apt to change
their aspect for us after we have heard some frank
remark on their less admirable points; and on the
other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience
takes our encroachments on those who never complain
or have nobody to complain for them.
The energy that would animate a crime is not more


MIDDLEWARCII.
219
than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when
the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Ros-
amond's fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live
on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there
goes somewhere an originating activity, if 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
face downmost for ages on a forsaken beach, or “rest
quietly under the drums and tramplings of many con-
quests,” it may end by letting us into the secret of
usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long
empires ago; this world being apparently a huge whis-
pering-gallery. Such conditions are often minutely
represented in our petty lifetimes. As the stone which
has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by
curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar,
through whose labors it may at last fix the date of in-
vasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper
which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap
may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes
which have knowledge enough to turn it into the open-
ing of a catastrophe. To Uriel, watching the progress
of planetary history from the Sun, the one result would
be just as much of a coincidence as the other.
Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning
the nature of his illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to


220
MIDDLEMARCH.
Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it might
be likely to cut short his labors or his life. On this
point, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the
suspicion of being pitied for anything in his lot sur-
mised or known in spite of himself was embittering,
the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by
frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was neces-
sarily intolerable to him. Every proud mind knows
something of this experience, and perhaps it is only to
be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough to
make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty in-
stead of exalting.
When the commonplace “ We must all die” trans-
forms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness, “I
must die — and soon,” then death grapples us, and his
fingers are cruel; afterward he may come to fold us in
his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of
dim earthly discerning may be like the first.
Irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even
in riper minds than Mary Garth's; our impartiality is
kept for abstact merit and demerit, which none of us
ever saw.
Looking at the mother, you might hope that the
daughter would become like her, which is a prospec-
tive advantage equal to a dowry — the mother too often
standing behind the daughter like a malignant proph-
ecy -"Such as I am she will shortly be.”


MIDDLEMAR"'A.
221
Where women love each other, men learn to smother
their mutual dislike.
Mr. Horrock 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 Horrock 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 effect 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 the thing 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
something may be called, it is virtually our own judg.
ment, even when it seems like the most slavish reliance
on another.


222
MIDDLEMARCH.
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, indisposed to believe
that the universal order of things would necessarily be
agreeable to an agreeable young gentleman.
With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do
justice to their more amiable qualities, forgive their
little offences, and concerning each in turn try to ar-
rive at the conclusion that he will be eager to oblige us,
our own eagerness to be obliged being as communi-
cable as other warmth.
There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little
fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the
cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her
favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society
would have tried to hold her Lindley Murray above the
waves.
The remote worship of a woman throned out of their
reach plays a great part in men's lives, but in most
cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recogni-
tion, some approving sign by which his soul's sovereign
may cheer him without descending from her high
place.


224
MIDDLEMARCII.
are called the solid things of life and greatly for its
subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling as
he had toward Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a
fortune. What others might have called the futility
of his passion made an additional delight for his imag-
ination : he was conscious of a generous movement,
and of verifying in his own experience that higher
love-poetry which had charmed his fancy.
To collect documents is one mode of serving your
country, and to remember the contents of a document
is another.
With regard to critical occasions, it often happens
that all moments seem comfortably remote until the
last.
It was not about the beginning of his speech that
Mr. Brooke was at all anxious: this, he felt sure,
would be all right; he should have it quite pat, cut out
as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope. Embarking
would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might
come after was alarming.
The egoism which enters into our theories does not
affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is
satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
Bulstrode was doctrinally convinced that there was a
total absence of merit in himself, but that doctrinal
conviction may be held without pain when the sense of


MIDDLEMARCII.
225
demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory, and
Nay, 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 memory 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 final, simply because it is new. We are told
that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be
agitated by the carthquakes, but they probably see be-
yond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more
to come.
When 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.
Lydgate was constantly visiting the homes of the
poor, and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their
small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time
ceased to be remarkable - is it not rather what we
expect in men - that they should have numerous
strands of experience lying side by side, and never
15


226
MIDDLEMARCA.
compare them with each other? Expenditure - like
ugliness and errors — becomes a totally new thing
when we attach our own personality to it, and meas-
ure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our
own sensations) between ourselves and others.
Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a
creature who had talons, but who had Reason too,
which often reduces us to meekness.
At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath
a gentleman to write legibly, or with a hand in the
least suitable to a clerk. Fred wrote the lines de-
manded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any vis-
count or bishop of the day : the vowels were all alike
and the consonants only distinguishable as turning up
or down, the strokes had a blotty solidity, and the let-
ters disdained to keep the line : in short, it was a man-
uscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret when
you know beforehand what the writer means.
As Caleh looked on, his visage showed a growing
depression, but when Fred handed him the paper he
gave something like a snarl, and rapped the paper pas-
sionately with the back of his hand. Bad work like
this dispelled all Caleb's mildness.
“The deuce!” he exclaimed, snarlingly. "To think
that this is a country where a man's education may
cost hundreds and hundreds, and it turns you out
this !” Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his
spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, “The


MIDDLEMARCH.
227
Lord have mercy on us, Fred, I can't put up with
this!”
" What can I do, Mr. Garth? ” said Fred, whose
spirits 'vad sunk very low, not only at the estimate
of his handwriting, but at the vision of himself as
liable to be ranked with office-clerks.
"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 it?” asked Caleb, energetically,
quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the work.
“ Is there so little business in the world that you must
be sending puzzles over the country? But 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 Lydgate and Rosamond there was that
total missing of each other's mental track, which
is too evidently possible even between persons who
are continually thinking of each other. To Lydgate it
seemed that he had been spending month after month
in sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best
power to his tenderness for Rosamond ; bearing her
little claims and interruptions without impatience,
and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness
to look through less and less of interfering illusion at
the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to
his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his profes-
sion and his scientific study, an ardor which he had
fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as


228
MIDDLEMARCA.
sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But
his endurance was mingled with a self-discontent
which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess
to make more than half our bitterness under griev-
ances, wife or husband included. It always remains
true that if we had been greater, circumstances would
have been less strong against us.
Rosamond was oppressed by ennui, and by that dis-
satisfaction which in women's minds is continually
turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no rcal
claims, springing from no deeper passion than the
vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of im-
pelling action as well as speech.
Indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the
ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable;
and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve
when we secretly long that it may turn out to be un-
necessary. In such states of mind the most incred-
ulous person has a private leaning toward miracle :
impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled;
still -- very wonderful things have happened!
The terror of being judged sharpens the memory :
it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited
past which has been habitually recalled only in general
phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into
one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but
intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy
past. With memory set smarting like a reopened


230
MIDDLEMARCH.
work-room, putting arguments for and against the
probability of certain biological views, but he had none
of those definite things to say or to show which give
the way-marks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit such
as he used himself to insist on, saying that “there
must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry,” and that
“a man's mind must be continually expanding and
shrinking between the whole human horizon and the
horizon of an object-glass.”
He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual ac-
tivity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his
strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy con-
ditions, have kept him above the petty uncontrolled
susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was
now. a prey to that worst irritation which arises not
simply from annoyances, but from the second con-
sciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted
energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the
reverse of all his former purposes. " This is what I
am thinking of; and that is what I might have been
thinking of,” was the bitter incessant murmur within
him, making every difficulty a double goad to im-
patience.
Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in
literature by general discontent with the universe as a
trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen
by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an
insignificant world may have its consolatlons. Lyd-
gate's discontent was much harder to bear : it was the
sense that there was a grand existence in thought and


MIDDLEMARCH.
231
effective action lying around him, while his self was
being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic
fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay
such fears. His troubles will perhaps appear miserably
sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty persons who
can know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale.
Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who
are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but
by being free from money-craving, with all its base
hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its
hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire to make bad
work pass for good, its seeking for function which
ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for
Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.
The shallowness of a water-nixie's soul may have a
charm until she becomes didactic.
In marriage, the certainty, “ She will never love me
much,” is easier to bear, than the fear, “I shall love
her no more.”
It is a terrible moment in young lives when the
closeness of love's bond has turned to the power of
galling
Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the
service his practice did him in counteracting his per-
sonal cares. He had no longer free energy enough for
spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by
the bedside of patients the direct external cails on his


232
MIDDLEMARCI.
judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse
needed to draw him out of himself. It was not sim- .
ply that beneficent harness of routine which enables
silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live
calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate
fresh application of thought, and on the consideration
of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back
through life would say that the kindest man we have
ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that
surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed
perception, has come to us in our need with a more
sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers.
When a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes,
he may stay a long while there in spite of professional
accomplishment. In the British climate there is no
incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished
lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly between scien-
tific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind of
residence.
Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an intensity
disproportionate to the number of his more indirect
misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were like the
subtle muscular movements which are not taken ac-
count of in the consciousness, though they bring about
the end that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is
only what we are vividly conscious of that we can
vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.
A man vows, and yet will not cast away the means


MIDDLEMARCI.
233
of breaking his vow. Is it that he 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 muscles in the very
moments when he is telling himself over again the
reasons for his vow.
This vague 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 con-
cerning Bulstrode's carlier life was, for some minds,
melted into the mass of mystery, as so much lively
metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
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 as
possible a share in the stake.
There are episodes in most men's lives in which their
highest qualities can only cast a deterrirg shadow
over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lyd-
gate's tender-hearteduess was present just then only
as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an


234
MIDDLEWARCI.
emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For he was
very miserable. Only those who know 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 find it easier to believe is grossly
false.
Again and again, in his time of freedom, Lydgate
had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt
into moral doubt, and had said, “ The purest experi-
ment in treatment may still be conscientious : my bus-
iness is to take care of life, and to do the best I can
think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous
than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but
the very breath of science is a contest with mistake,
and must keep the conscience alive."
Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives,
are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment of their
own visions.
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain igno-
rant that the town held a bad opinion of her husband.
No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far
as to make a plain statement to the wife of the un-
pleasant fact known or believed about her husband;


MIDDLEMARCA.
237
panorama a future where he himself was sliding into
that pleasureless 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 get 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 Right, 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
MIDDLEMARCH.
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
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 mistakes 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 loudly-asserted beliefs. While
this is the social air in which mortals begin to breathe,
there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's


242
MIDDLEMARCH,
and our timorous lips more or less under anxious con-
trol.
It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her eldest son,
Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for
a short holiday – Christy, who held it the most desir-
able thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all it-
eratures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an
incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of object-
lesson given 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-
arship than of a giraffe's, wishing that he himself were
more of the same height.
It seemed clear that where there was a baby things
were right enough, and that error, in general, was a
mere lack of that central poising force.
A man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure
generally, what he could do in the way of mischief if
he chose, and that if he abstains from making himself
ill or beggaring himself, or talking with the utmost
looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity
will allow, it is not because he is a spooney.
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather
unlike ourselves : there are conditions under which


MIDDLEMARCI.
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 see how an effect may be produced is often to see
possible missings and checks; but to see 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.
It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at
human beings as if they were merely animals with a
toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face.'
Of course people need not be always talking well.
Only one tells the quality of their minds when they try
to talk well."
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
that – to love what is great, and try to reach it, and
yet to fail.'


MIDDLEJARCH.
245
power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort
of love. I know it may be very dear – but it murders
our marriage - and then the marriage stays with us
like a murder – and everything else is gone.'
A man always makes a fool of himself speechifying:
there's no excuse but being on the right side, so that
you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing.?
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 stratagem,
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 quarterings are
three cuttle-fish sable, and a commentator rampant.?
Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families;
it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
When a woman is not contradicted she has no mo-
tive for obstinacy in her absurdities.2
You 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 things by the
same names as other people call them by. To be 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


MIDDLE MARCI.
247
When one is grateful for something too good for
common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than
speech - one does not, at least, hear how inadequate
the words are. 4
Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and
something like pity for those less lucky men who were
rot of his profession.
If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad, he
thought, I night have got into some stupid draught-
horse work or other, and lived always in blinkers. I
should never have been happy in any profession that
did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and
yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors.
There is nothing like the medical profession for that:
one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the
distance, and befriend the old fogies in the parish too.4
Lydgate. — Don't you think men overrate the neces-
sity for humoring everybody's nonsense, till they get
despised by the very fools they humor? The shortest
way is to make your value felt, so that people must
put up with you whether you flatter them or not.
Mr. Farebrother. - With all my heart. But then you
must be sure of having the value, and you must keep
yourself independent. Very few men can do that.
Either you slip out of service altogether, and become
good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a
good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you.
I had some ambition. I meant everything to be


248
MIDDLEMARCI.
different with me. I thought I had more strength and
mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as
nobody can see except one's self.“
When a man gets a good berth, half the deserving
must come after.5
By being contemptible we set men's mind to the
tune of contempt."
Personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you
boil it down to the impressions which make it simply
an opinion.
To think of the part one little woman can play in the
life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very
good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a
discipline !
Young women are severe; they don't feel the stress
of action as men do.5
Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the
consequences of their recklessness.5
Mr. Farebrother. — There is the terrible Nemesis fol-
lowing on some errors, that it is always possible for
those who like it to interpret them into a crime: there
is no proof in favor of the man outside his own con-
sciousness and assertion.
Dorothea. -Oh, how cruel! And would you not like


MIDDLEWARCII.
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 artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief
pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere
sense of knowing.
Motives are points of honor, I suppose — nobody
can prove them.
Fred. - I am so miserable, Mary— if you knew how
miserable I am you would be sorry for me.
Mary. — There are other things to be more sorry for
than that. But selfish people always think their own
discomfort of more importance than anything else in
the world.
You must be sure of two things: you must love your
work, and not be always looking over the edge of it,
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.





254
INDEX.
Childhood, benefit of a happy, 13; forgetfulness of the joys of, 34; sor.
rows of, 84; loneliness of, 87; associations of, 90, 91; belief of, 139.
Children, management of, 129.
Church, effect of going to, 127.
Clothes, shabby, becoming to Maggie Tulliver, 115.
Commonplace, nothing in certain lights, 15.
Compromise, effect of, 186.
Conceit, comfort in, 110.
Confession, it prompts a response, 16; sympathy, an impulse to, 10;
it gives definiteness to memory, 176.
Consciousness, description of the recovery of, 11.
Consequences, unpitying nature of, 75; responsibility for, 75.
Convenience, a motive, 23.
Courtship, limited knowledge of character in, 209; delusions of, 209
Craig, character of, 61, 65.
Cross, what is the true, 68.
DAYLIGIIT, changes aspect of misery, 19.
Dead, the, we cannot atone to, 3; grief for severity to, 50; never dead
to us tlll forgotten, 51; likeness seen in, 51; valuing them above the
living, 61.
Death and life equally sacred, 16.
Deeds, effect of, indestructible, 135; contaminating effect of ill, 130.
Deficiencies, moral, detected by a feminine eye, 33.
Demon worship, still prevailing, 127.
Despair shown in self-possession, 50.
Dinah, character of, 61.
Discoverers not at first distinguished, 205.
Discussions, the waiving of, exasperating, 214.
Doctor, the family, 204.
Dogs, sympathy with, 67.
Discontent of Lydgate in his life, 230.
Dorothea, character of, 201; her mistakes, 238; her influence, 239.
Duties, they cannot be chosen, 157.
Du!y, idea of, centre of moral life, 22; monitions of, 119.
EDUCATION, false theories of, 101.
Electioneering trickery, 179.


INDEX.
255
Errors in persons of small means, 25.
Evil, effects of, 75.
Exile, effects of, 125.
Experience leads to sympathy, 56; 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.
Faces 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, 206.
Faith, effect of loss of, in fellow-men, 139.
Falsehood becoming unconscious, 121; easy in society, 137.
Family likeness, strangeness of, 52.
Farming, unprofitableness of, 64.
Fear, use of, 136.
Feeling, more effective than opinion, 54; needful solvent of ideas, 142.
Force not measured by negations, 183.
Forgiveness, meaning of, 57.
Friendship delightful, described, 169.
Good, substantial, 154.
Goodness, easily discouraged, 216.
Gossip in Middlemarch, 234.
Gratitude, why some do not feel it, 172.
Grief, becoming insensibility, 3; fashionably dressed female in, 89;
real better than false, 189.
HAPPINESS, not be sought, 111; the search for, fruitless, 123; not
obtained suddenly, 178.
Hatred compared to fire, 26.
Help, better than alms-giving, 26.
Hetty, character of, 64.
Ilorseback, dialogue on, 49.
House, a melancholy, described, 200.
Humility, learned through suffering, 12; need of, 59.
IDEAS, religious, 14.


INDEX.
257
Medicine, practice of, 231; conscientious treatment in, 234.
Men, slow, 62; tongue-tyed, 63; acuteness of, 64; the strongest often
the gentlest, 67; dulness of, 76; restlessness of, 129; they are un-
certain instruments, 164.
Mildness, not always a permanent quality, 84.
Miserliness, common among some classes, 104; of Silas Marner,
126; a safe quality, 245.
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; has a self larger than her
maternity, 169; not always deceived in her partiality, 204.
Music, effect of, 31; relief in, 97; harmony of lovers in, 105; satisfac-
tion in, 110.
NATURE, the higher understands the lower, 44; dificult to com.
prehend, 52; one does nothing at variance with his, 74.
Nemesis, characteristics of, 15; and conscience, 43.
News, bad, Mr. Brooke's way of telling, 237.
OBEDIENCE, Divine Presence found in, 66.
Opinion, manner of expressing, 106; public, a great power, 178.
Oratory, conflict of emotions in, 145; two kinds, popular, 190.
PAIN, release from acute, 15; effect of witnessing, 46.
Parting, at the root of all joy, 56.
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, 167.
People, commonplace, worthy of interest, 4; effect of agrecable, 39;
severity of mild, 40; susceptible, affected by tone, 40; of the coun.
try less impressible than those of the town, 67.
Pity, divine and human, 13.
Plans, useless to form, 66.
Pleasure, wearisome days of, 65.
Pluck to fight, though sure of losing, 27.
Politeness sometimes an exasperation, 213.
Possibilities, uncertainty of, 200.
Poyser, Mrs., character of, 72.


INDEX.
259
Stelling, Mrs., character of, 105.
Strangers, interesting, 203.
Strength often shown in homage to weakness, 169.
Strong, duty of the, 54.
Submission, energy needful to, 218.
Suffering, a regeneration, 44.
Sympathy, a key to knowledge of others, 17; a help to patience and
charity, 45.
TALK, pleasure in, 63; possibility of abstaining from, 63; useless.
ness of, 190, shows mental qualities of speaker, 243.
Time changes aspect of things, 34.
Tom and Maggie, character of, 88.
Tongues, unmanageableness of, 217.
Trouble, common to all, 60; work gives help in, 60.
Trust, of youth in good fortune, 47; gives strength, 57; best placed
in bachelors, 72; need of, 128.
Truth, every, valuable, 182.
Truthfulness, a rare quality, 37.
Tulliver, Mr., character of, 100; Mrs., character of, 99.
Tunes, Scotch, comparison of, 71.
UNCERTAINTY of things, obvious, 186.
VANITIES, our, differ, 205.
Veracity, a plant of Paradise, 154.
WAKING, sensations of, 138.
Watching in a sick-room, 87.
Walking, Romola's way of, 159.
Wedding journeys, disagreements on, 211; Mrs. Cadwallader's opin.
ion of, 250.
Women, complaining, described, 43; foolishness of, 64; unreason.
ableness of, 72; quickness of, 72; not a blessing, 73; difference
between delicate and coarse, 74; timidity of, 98; fondness for help
in, 100; young, their ability to judge men, 167; ardor of a good
woman, a valuable influence, 174; cffect on men of the littleness
of, 183; an inexhaustible subject of study, 197; like Dorothea, too


260
INDEX.
stimulating, 202; plain, how Lydgate regarded them, 202; Lydgate's
notion of carnest, 246; influence of, 248.
Words, incompetency of, 124.
Work, needful as worship, 53; pleasure in, 55; need of persistent,
112; becomes sometimes an end, 122; Caleb Garth's view of, 211.
Writing, Fred Vincey's hand, 226; sometimes better than speech, 247.
Youth, not in itself hopeful, 225.


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