Middlemarch | Page 6

any yoked creature without its private opinions?
CHAPTER II.
"`Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hacia nosotros viene sobre un
caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza un yelmo de oro?' `Lo
que veo y columbro,' respondio Sancho, `no es sino un hombre sobre
un as no 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,' answered Don Quixote: `and that
resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino.'"
"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy
smiling way, taking up Sir James Chettam's remark that he was
studying Davy's Agricultural Chemistry. "Well, now, Sir Humphry
Davy; I dined with him years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was
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 afterwards 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,
were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair and his deep
eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare
form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different as
possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type
represented by Sir James Chettam.
"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 cannot 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 everything; 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."
"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 towards 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 time--human 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 far--over 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 hard. I have always been in
favor of a little theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be landed
back in the dark ages. But talking of books, there is Southey's
`Peninsular War.' I am reading that of a morning. You know Southey?"
"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 eyesight on old
characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am
fastidious