common towards London. Any valid professional aims may often find
a freer, if not a richer field, in the provinces."

One of Lydgate's gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet
capable of becoming very low and gentle at the right moment. About his
ordinary bearing there was a certain fling, a fearless expectation of
success, a confidence in his own powers and integrity much fortified by
contempt for petty obstacles or seductions of which he had had no
experience. But this proud openness was made lovable by an expression
of unaffected good-will. Mr. Bulstrode perhaps liked him the better for
the difference between them in pitch and manners; he certainly liked
him the better, as Rosamond did, for being a stranger in Middlemarch.
One can begin so many things with a new person!--even begin to be a
better man.

"I shall rejoice to furnish your zeal with fuller opportunities," Mr.
Bulstrode answered; "I mean, by confiding to you the superintendence of
my new hospital, should a maturer knowledge favor that issue, for I am
determined that so great an object shall not be shackled by our two
physicians. Indeed, I am encouraged to consider your advent to this
town as a gracious indication that a more manifest blessing is now to
be awarded to my efforts, which have hitherto been much with stood.
With regard to the old infirmary, we have gained the initial point--I
mean your election. And now I hope you will not shrink from incurring
a certain amount of jealousy and dislike from your professional
brethren by presenting yourself as a reformer."

"I will not profess bravery," said Lydgate, smiling, "but I acknowledge
a good deal of pleasure in fighting, and I should not care for my
profession, if I did not believe that better methods were to be found
and enforced there as well as everywhere else."

"The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir,"
said the banker. "I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status,
for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable
townspeople here. My own imperfect health has induced me to give some
attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has
placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the
metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which
medical treatment labors in our provincial districts."

"Yes;--with our present medical rules and education, one must be
satisfied now and then to meet