, without
any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture,
preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession."

"He has no means but what you furnish, I suppose."

"I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I
would furnish in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a
scholarly education, and launching him respectably. I am-therefore
bound to fulfil the expectation so raised," said Mr. Casaubon, putting
his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which
Dorothea noticed with admiration.

"He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a
Mungo Park," said Mr. Brooke. "I had a notion of that myself at one
time."

"No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our
geognosis: that would be a special purpose which I could recognize with
some approbation, though without felicitating him on a career which so
often ends in premature and violent death. But so far is he from
having any desire for a more accurate knowledge of the earth's surface,
that he said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and
that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting grounds
for the poetic imagination."

"Well, there is something in that, you know," said Mr. Brooke, who had
certainly an impartial mind.

"It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and
indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury
for him in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far
submissive to ordinary rule as to choose one."

"Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness,"
said Dorothea, who was interesting herself in finding a favorable
explanation. "Because the law and medicine should be very serious
professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes
depend on them."

"Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly
determined in his aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady
application, and to that kind of acquirement which is needful
instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to
self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has
stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work
regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or
acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have
pointed