At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for

Mr. Brooke to escape. He walked out of the yard as quickly as he

could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation. He had never

been insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard

himself as a general favorite (we are all apt to do so, when we think

of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want

of us). When he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth twelve years before he

had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the landlord's taking

everything into his own hands.

Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the

midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times

than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite

somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to

the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than

the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine

art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only

three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals escape

knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of

London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would

have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the

parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense

difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained

unmanageable after twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses

sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to

him than it had been before. Some things he knew thoroughly, namely,

the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock

and crops, at Freeman's End--so called apparently by way of sarcasm,

to imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there was

no earthly "beyond" open to him.




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