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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.

All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways. He became rather distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical farmer, and produced a work on the Cultivation of Green Crops and the Economy of Cattle-Feeding which won him high congratulations at agricultural meetings; but in Middlemarch admiration was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called Stories of Great Men, taken from Plutarch, and had it printed and published by Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived, and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else.

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after his marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment. I cannot say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a horse which turned out badly, though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting; and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between hedge and ditch.

There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she said laughingly, "That would be too great a trial to your mother." Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished

luster of her housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket, and showed a marvelous n'cety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones to bring down the mellow pears.

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam and Eve alike, also it occurred to her that in the East the men too wore petticoats. But this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of the former, was one too many, for Ben answered, contemptuously, "The more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether boys were not better than girls. Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were alike naughty; but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run faster, and throw with more precision to a greater distance. With this oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness; but Letty took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles.

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Fred never became rich, his hopefulness had not led him to expect that; but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his hands carried him in plenty through those “bad times which are always present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well grounded in grammar and geography. Nevertheless, they were found quite forward enough when they went to school; perhaps because they had liked nothing so well as being with their mother. When Fred was riding home on winter evenings, he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother. He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason

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- I shudder to think what

you would have been, a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric pocket-handkerchiefs!"

Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty, leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his life. He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he always regarded himself as a failure; he had not done what he once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him enviable to have so charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion. Rosamond never committed a second compromising indiscretion. She simply continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years went on, he opposed her less and less, whence Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird-of-paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterward married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children.

Dorothea never repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it. No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses. Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry his cousin, young enough to have been his son, with no property, and not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been a nice wo

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man," else she would not have married either the one or the other. Certainly those determining acts of her 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 society into which she was born had not smiled on propositions 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 contradiction 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 life, where great feelings will take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people, with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

PARTON.

1822

JAMES PARTON, though a native of England, where he was born in 1822, has lived in the United States since his early childhood. He has been an industrious writer, chiefly in the field of biography, in which he has done some admirable work. His first book was The Life of Horace Greeley, which was published in 1855, and it has been followed by biographies of Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin F. Butler, John Jacob Astor, and Thomas Jefferson. He has labored in other departments of literature, editing The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, and writing several pamphlets on New York politics, etc.; but his fame as a writer will rest on his biographical work. In this specialty he has been signally successful in presenting vivid and attractive portraits of his subjects, supported by dramatic pictures of their times. In reaching this result he has been forced to disregard in many instances the strict records of history, and his biographies are, therefore, not absolutely unimpeachable in point of facts. He displays great industry in the collection of material and great skill in its arrangement; and, by availing himself of many personal particulars which most biographers would deem too insignificant for use, has made his books exceptionally readable. His Life of Thomas Jefferson, recently published, furnishes good specimens of his faults and his merits: it is full of matter, and very fascinating; but it is marred somewhat by historical inaccuracies.

PATRICK HENRY'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH ENGLAND.

PATRICK HENRY had been coming and going during Jefferson's student years,* dropping in when the General Court met in the autumn, and riding homeward, with a book or two of Jefferson's in his saddlebags, when the court adjourned over till the spring; then returning with the books unread. The wondrous eloquence which he had displayed in the Parsons Case in December, 1763, does not seem to have been generally known in Williamsburg in 1764; for he moved about the streets and public places unrecognized, though not unmarked. It would not have been extraordinary if our young student had been a little ashamed of his oddity of a guest as they walked together towards the Capitol, at the time when the young ladies were abroad, Sukey Potter, Betsy Moore, Judy Burwell, and the rest; for Henry's dress was coarse, worn, and countrified, and he walked with such an air of thoughtless unconcern that he was taken by some for an idiot. But he had a cause to plead that winter; and when he sat down he had become "Mr. Henry" to all Williamsburg. You will observe in

*The extract is from Parton's Life of Jefferson. Jefferson at this time was a law-student and a warm personal friend of Patrick Henry, who was himself a young man and just becoming known as a skillful lawyer and popular speaker. The speech referred to was delivered in the Virginia House of Burgesses -a body somewhat resembling the State Legislature of to-dayin 1765, and is generally familiar to school-children, extracts from it being given in nearly all school "Speakers."

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