MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 37

"Thrice happy she that is so well assured

Unto herself and settled so in heart

That neither will for better be allured

Ne fears to worse with any chance to start,

But like a steddy ship doth strongly part

The raging waves and keeps her course aright;

Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart,

Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight.

Such self-assurance need not fear the spight

Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends;

But in the stay of her own stedfast might

Neither to one herself nor other bends.

Most happy she that most assured doth rest,

But he most happy who such one loves best."

--SPENSER.

The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general

election or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George

the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel

generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble

type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time.

With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see

which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry

passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious

to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers,

and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote

bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy

of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers

found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation

on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"--which had

a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress--

because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus

blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal;

but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet," which--since its

blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public

mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become feeble

in its blowing.

It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer,"

when the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance

to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long

experience acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of

judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy--