"Thrice happy she that is so well assured

Unto herself and settled so in heart

That neither will for better be allured

Ne fears to worse with any chance to start,

But like a steddy ship doth strongly part

The raging waves and keeps her course aright;

Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart,

Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight.

Such self-assurance need not fear the spight

Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends;

But in the stay of her own stedfast might

Neither to one herself nor other bends.

Most happy she that most assured doth rest,

But he most happy who such one loves best."

--SPENSER.

The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election

or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth

was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally

depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the

uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glow-worm

lights of country places, how could men see which were their own

thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures,

of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather

than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies

which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest,

and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors?

Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous

position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given

up the "Pioneer"--which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in

the van of progress--because it had taken Peel's side about the

Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of

Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet,"

which--since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of

the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become

feeble in its blowing.

It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when

the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to

public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience

acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well

as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy--in fact, all those

qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the

least disposed to share lodgings.

Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely

than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel,

was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question

"emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought

the "Pioneer" some months ago.




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