MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 85

"Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr.

No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr.

Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr.

Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his

private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards

unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the

judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the

foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.

Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the

earth! Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.

Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I,

said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my

way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said

Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.

He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him,

said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said

Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all

the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;

therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."

--Pilgrim's Progress.

When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions

bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?

That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have

not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before 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 incarnate--who knows that he is stoned,

not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed

to be.

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he

made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end

his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.

The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from

one dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a

tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.

His equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had

sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to,

yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them

to judgment by a full confession to his wife: the acts which he had

washed and diluted with inward argument and motive, and for which it