re. And in him we have
presented all those essential and fundamental elements of nature which
give assurance that, Dorothea by his side, he shall be no unfitting
helpmeet to her, no drag or hindrance on her higher life; that he shall
rise to the elevation and purity of her self-consecration, and shall
stand by her side sustaining, guiding, expanding that life of
ever-growing fulness and human helpfulness to which each is dedicated.

But the essence of all this moral and spiritual loveliness is its
unconsciousness. Self has no place in it. From the first the one
absorbing life aim and action is toward others--toward aiding the toils,
advancing the well-being, relieving the suffering, elevating the life, of
all around her. And this in no spirit of self-satisfied and vainglorious
self-estimation, but in that utter unconsciousness which is
characteristic of her whole being. Of the social reformer, the purposed
philanthropist, the benefactor of the poor, the wretched, and the fallen,
there is no trace in Dorothea Brooke. Grant that, as she is first
presented to us, that aim is for the time apparently concentrated in
improved cottage accommodation for the poor; even here there is no
thought of displaying the skill of the design and contriver: there is
thought alone of the object she seeks--ameliorating the condition of
those she yearns to benefit.

In her very first interview with Casaubon, there is something
inexpressibly touching in the humility of childlike trust with which she
accepts him and his "great mind," and the innocent purity with which she
allows herself to indulge the vision of a life passed by his side; a life
which he, by his influence and guidance, is to make more full and free,
and delivered from those conventionalities of custom and fashion which
restrict it. At last his cold, formal proposal of marriage is made. She
sees nothing of its true character--that he is but seeking, not an
helpmeet for life and soul in all their higher requirements, but simply
and solely a kind of superior, blindly submissive dependant and drudge.
In the _impossibility_ of marriage presenting itself to her purity of
maiden innocence as a mere establishment in life, or in any of those
meaner aspects in which meaner natures regard it, she sees nothing of all
this--nothing save that the yearning of her heart is fulfilled, and that
henceforth her life shall pass under a higher guardianship, sustained by
a holier strength, ani