SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, AND SILAS MARNER, THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

HARPER & BROTHERS will send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

MIDDLEMARCH:

A STUDY OF PROVINCIAL LIFE.

BOOK I.-MISS BROOKE.

CHAPTER I.

"Since I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it."

sages of Pascal's "Pensées' and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occu

decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection. With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family, and afterward in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned con

-The Maid's Tragedy: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.pation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the MISS BROOKE had that kind of beauty which anxieties of a spiritual life, involving eternal conseems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. sequences, with a keen interest in gimp and Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to lofty conception of the world which might frankItalian painters; and her profile as well as her ly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dig- of conduct there; she was enamored of intensity nity from her plain garments, which by the side and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to of a fine quotation from the Bible-or from one seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then of our elder poets—in a paragraph of to-day's to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being she had not sought it. Certainly such elements remarkably clever, but with the addition that her in the character of a marriageable girl tended to sister Celia had more common-sense. Never-interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being theless Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-dition. tying forefathers-any thing lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterward conformed, and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter. Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the first item to be deducted from when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many pas

It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had traveled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the most glutinously indefinite minds inclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests except the retention of his snuff-box, concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch.

In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the more for

the time when she would be of age, and have | Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the

truths of life, retained very child-like ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton, when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable, handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her re

some command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress; for not only had the sisters seven hundred a year each from their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand a year-a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic Question, innocent of future gold fields, and of that gorgeous plutoc-marks even when she expressed uncertainty-how racy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life.

could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces. But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world—that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader, the rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.

And how should Dorothea not marry?—a girl so handsome and with such prospects? Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes, and her insistance on regulating life according to notions which might cause a wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles-who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere with political economy and the keeping of saddle-horses: a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself in Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the such fellowship. Women were expected to have Grange to-day, with another gentleman whom the weak opinions; but the great safeguard of socie- girls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea ty and of domestic life was, that opinions were felt some venerating expectation. This was the not acted on. Sane people did what their neigh-Reverend Edward Casaubon, noted in the counbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

ty as a man of profound learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work conThe rural opinion about the new young ladies, cerning religious history; also as a man of wealth even among the cottagers, was generally in favor enough to give lustre to his piety, and having of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-look-views of his own, which were to be more clearly ing, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clockface for it.

tee.

ascertained on the publication of his book. His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarship.

Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she had set going in the village, and was taking her usual place in the Yet those who approached Dorothea, though pretty sitting-room which divided the bedrooms prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, of the sisters, bent on finishing a plan for some found that she had a charm unaccountably recon- buildings (a kind of work which she delighted cilable with it. Most men thought her bewitch-in), when Celia, who had been watching her with ing when she was on horseback. She loved the a hesitating desire to propose something, said: fresh air and the various aspects of the country, "Dorothea dear, if you don't mind—if you and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with min-are not very busy-suppose we looked at mamgled pleasures she looked very little like a devo-ma's jewels to-day, and divided them? It is exRiding was an indulgence which she al-actly six months to-day since uncle gave them to lowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; you, and you have not looked at them yet." she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan, sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it. She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Čelia with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance.

Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full presence of the pout being kept back by a habitual awe of Dorothea and principle-two associated facts which might show a mysterious electricity if you touched them incautiously. To her relief, Dorothea's eyes were full of laughter as she looked up.

"What a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia! Is it six calendar or six lunar months?"

"It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of April when uncle gave them to you. You know, he said that he had forgotten them till then. I believe you have never thought of them since you locked them up in the cabinet here."

even any thing pretty about the gift of the orna- | were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair ments, which she put back into the box and and his deep eye-sockets made him resemble the carried away. Dorothea, too, was unhappy, as portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the pale complexion which became a student; the purity of her own feeling and speech in the as different as possible from the blooming Enscene which had ended with that little explosion. glishman of the red-whiskered type represented Celia's consciousness told her that she had not by Sir James Chettam. been at all in the wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether.

"I am sure-at least I trust," thought Celia, "that the wearing of a necklace will not interfere with my prayers. And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea's opinions, now we are going into society, though, of course, she herself ought to be bound by them. But Dorothea is not always consistent."

Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister calling her.

"Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan, I shall think I am a great architect, if I have not got incompatible stairs and fire-places.'

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind toward her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

CHAPTER II.

"Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hácia nosotros viene sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza un yelmo de oro ?' 'Lo que veo y columbro,' respondiò Sancho, 'no es sino un hombre sobre un asno pardo como el mio, que trae sobre la cabeza una cosa que relumbra.'. Pues ese es el yelmo de Mambrino, dijo Don Quijote."-CERVANTES.

"Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a dapple-gray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?' 'What I see,' answered Sancho, 'is nothing but a man on a gray ass like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' 'Just so,' answers Don Quixote: and that resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino.""

"I am reading the 'Agricultural Chemistry,' said this excellent baronet, "because I am going to take one of the farms into my own hands, and see if something can not be done in setting a good pattern of farming among my tenants. Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke ?"

"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlor of your cow-house. It won't do. I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to every thing; you can let nothing alone. No, no-see that your tenants don't sell their straw, and that kind of thing; and give them draining-tiles, you know. But your fancy-farming will not do-the most expensive sort of whistle you can buy you may as well keep a pack of hounds."

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Surely, ," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding out how men can make the most of the land which supports them all than in keeping dogs and horses only to gallop over it. It is not a sin to make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good of all.”

She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir James had appealed to her. He was accustomed to do so, and she had often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was her brother-in-law.

Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was speaking, and seemed to observe her newly.

"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke, smiling toward Mr. Casaubon. "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one timehuman perfectibility, now. But some say history moves in circles, and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too farover the hedge, in fact. It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time. But not too "SIR HUMPHREY DAVY ?" said Mr. Brooke, hard. I have always been in favor of a little over the soup, in his easy, smiling way, taking up theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be Sir James Chettam's remark that he was study-landed back in the dark ages. But talking of ing Davy's "Agricultural Chemistry." "Well, books, there is Southey's 'Peninsular War." I now, Sir Humphrey Davy: I dined with him am reading that of a morning. You know years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was Southey?" there too- the poet Wordsworth, you know. Now there was something singular. I was at Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met him-and I dined with him twenty years afterward at Cartwright's. There's an oddity in things, now. But Davy was there: he was a poet too. Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two. That was true in every sense, you know."

Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual. In the beginning of dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably. She wondered how a man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality. His manners, she thought,

"No," said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous reason, and thinking of the book only. "I have little leisure for such literature just now. I have been using up my eye-sight on old characters lately: the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I can not endure listening to an imperfect reader. It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world, and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution about my eye-sight.'