Mrs Cadwallader.—Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.

A woman's choice usually means taking the only man she can get.

These charitable people never know vinegar from wine till they have swallowed it and got the colic.

It is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self.

I can't wear my solemnity too often, else it will go to rags.

Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.

Sir James Chettam.-I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs lean.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Dorothea is engaged to be married. Engaged to Casaubon.

Sir James Chettam.-Casaubon?
Mrs Cadwallader.-Even so.

Sir James.-Good God! It is horrible! He is no better than a mummy!

Mrs Cadwallader.—She says he is a great soul.—A great bladder for dried peas to rattle in!

Lady Chettam.-Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear? Mrs Cadwallader. It strengthens the disease. Everything depends on the constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile-that's my view of the matter: and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the mill.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Now, do not let them lure you to the hustings, my dear Mr Brooke. A man always makes a fool of himself, speechifying: there's no excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing. You will lose yourself, I forewarn you. You will make a Saturday pie of all parties' opinions, and be pelted by everybody.

Mr Brooke. That is what I expect, you know— what I expect as an independent man. As to the Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be hooked on by any party. He may go with them up to a certain point-up to a certain point, you know. But that is what you ladies never understand.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Where your certain point is? No. I should like to be told how a man can have any certain point when he belongs to no party-leading a

roving life, and never letting his friends know his address. 'Nobody knows where Brooke will bethere's no counting on Brooke'-that is what people say of you, to be quite frank. Now, do turn respectable. How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you with a bad conscience and an empty pocket?

Mr Brooke. I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics. Your sex are not thinkers, you know— varium et mutabile semper—that kind of thing. You don't know Virgil. I knew-I was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know. That was what he said. You ladies are always against an independent attitude-a man's caring for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing. And there is no part of the country where opinion is narrower than it is here-I don't mean to throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent line; and if I don't take it, who will?

Mrs Cadwallader.-Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position. People of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about.

Mrs Cadwallader.-I warned you all of it. I said to Humphrey long ago, Mr Brooke is going to make a splash in the mud. And now he has done it.

Mr Cadwallader.-Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry. That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics.

Mrs Cadwallader.-He may do that afterwards, when he has come out on the other side of the mud with an ague.

Mr Cadwallader.—I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion. There's such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Brooke.

Mrs Cadwallader.-There is one good chance—that he will not like to feel his money oozing away. If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him. It's no use plying him with wide words like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him. What we good stingy people don't like, is having our sixpences sucked away from us.

Mrs Cadwallader.-You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I daresay you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine.

Dorothea.-I never called everything by the same name that all the people about me did.

Mrs Cadwallader.-But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear, and that is a proof of sanity.

Dorothea.-No. I still think that the greater part of

the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.

Celia.-Dodo need not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her friends.

Lady Chettam.—My dear Celia, a widow must wear her mourning at least a year.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Not if she marries again before the end of it.

No

Lady Chettam.-That is very rare, I hope. friend of ours ever committed herself in that way except Mrs Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable, which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punished for it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up loaded pistols at her.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Oh, if she took the wrong man! Marriage is always bad then, first or second. Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other. I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first.

Lady Chettam.-My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you. I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if our dear Rector were taken away.

Mrs Cadwallader.-Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is lawful to marry again, suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take the consequences, and one who does