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better-couldn't put it better, beforehand, you know. But there are oddities in things. Life isn't cast in a mould-not cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing. I never married myself, and it will be the better for you and yours. The fact is, I never loved any one well enough to put myself into a noose for them. It is a noose, you know. Temper now. There is temper. And a husband likes to be master.

Dorothea. I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal ease.

(To Dorothea.)-You must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a little in our family. I had it myself—that love of knowledge, and going into everything a little too much-it took me too far; though that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female line; or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you know-it comes out in the sons. Clever sons, clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time.

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours.

I think we deserve to be beaten out of our beautiful houses with a scourge of small cords-all of us who let tenants live in such sties as we see round us. Life in cottages might be happier than ours, if they were real houses fit for human beings from whom we expect duties and affections.

After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.

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Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

How very beautiful these gems are! It is strange how deeply colours seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St John. They look like fragments of heaven.

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Celia.-O Dodo, you must keep the cross yourself. Dorothea.-No, no, dear, no.

Celia. Yes, indeed you must; it would suit you— in your black dress, now.

Dorothea. Not for the

You might wear that.

world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket. Celia. Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it.

Dorothea. No, dear, no. Souls have complexions, too: what will suit one will not suit another.

Sir James Chettam.-Your sister is given to selfmortification, is she not?

Celia. I think she is. She likes giving up. Dorothea.-If that were true, Celia, my giving-up would be self-indulgence, not self-mortification.

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Dorothea (speaking of a tiny Maltese puppy).—It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets.

Sir James Chettam.-Oh, why?

Dorothea.-I believe all the petting that is given them does not make them happy. They are too helpless their lives are too frail. A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting. I like to think that the animals about us have souls something like our own, and either carry on their own little affairs or can be companions to us, like Monk here. Those creatures are parasitic.

Celia.-How very ugly Mr Casaubon is!

Dorothea.-Celia!

He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like. the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets. Celia.-Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?

Dorothea.-Oh, I daresay! when people of a certain sort looked at him.

Celia.-Mr Casaubon is so sallow.

Dorothea.-All the better. I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a cochon de lait.

Celia.-Dodo! I never heard you make such a comparison before.

Dorothea.-Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good comparison: the match is perfect. Celia. I wonder you show temper, Dorothea.

Dorothea. It is so painful in you, Celia, that you

will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilette, and never see the great soul in a man's face.

Celia. Has Mr Casaubon a great soul?

Dorothea.-Yes, I believe he has.

Celia. Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr Casaubon?

Dorothea.-Not that I know of.

Celia. I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so.

Dorothea. - What is there remarkable about his soup-eating?

Celia. Really, Dodo, can't you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he always blinks before he speaks. I don't know whether Locke blinked, but I'm sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did. Dorothea.- Celia, pray don't make any more observations of that kind.

Celia.—Why not? They are quite true.

Dorothea.-Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe.

Celia. Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr Casaubon's mother had not a commoner mind: she might have taught him better.

I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

Mr Farebrother.-There is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors, that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them into a crime: there is no proof in favour of the man outside his own consciousness and assertion.

Dorothea.-Oh, how cruel! And would you not like to be the one person who believed in that man's innocence, if the rest of the world belied him? Besides, there is a man's character beforehand to speak for him.

Mr Farebrother. But, my dear Mrs Casaubon, character is not cut in marble-it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do. Dorothea. Then it may be rescued and healed.

Dorothea.-There are comparatively few paintings that I can really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescoes, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe—like a child present at great ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one, the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine-something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

Ladislaw. Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired. Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and

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