e these
last words. But she presently added, more cheerfully, "Pray come to
Lowick and tell us more of this. I will mention the subject to Mr.
Casaubon. I must hasten home now."

She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to
subscribe two hundred a-year--she had seven hundred a-year as the
equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her at her marriage. Mr.
Casaubon made no objection beyond a passing remark that the sum might
be disproportionate in relation to other good objects, but when
Dorothea in her ignorance resisted that suggestion, he acquiesced. He
did not care himself about spending money, and was not reluctant to
give it. If he ever felt keenly any question of money it was through
the medium of another passion than the love of material property.

Dorothea told him that she had seen Lydgate, and recited the gist of
her conversation with him about the Hospital. Mr. Casaubon did not
question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know what
had passed between Lydgate and himself "She knows that I know," said
the ever-restless voice within; but that increase of tacit knowledge
only thrust further off any confidence between them. He distrusted her
affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

CHAPTER XLV.

It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their
forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times
present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do,
without the borrowed help and satire of times past;
condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions
of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue
the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal,
and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem
to indigitate and point at our times.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE:
Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched to
Dorothea was, like other oppositions, to be viewed in many different
lights. He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded
prejudice. Mr. Bulstrode saw in it not only medical jealousy but a
determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly by a hatred of that
vital religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay
representative--a hatred which certainly found pretexts apart from
religion such as were only too easy to find in the entanglements of
human action. These might be calle