Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not

only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies

who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their

establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are

constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting

new consciousness of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward,

some got higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and

fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in political

currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves

surprisingly grouped in consequence; while a few personages or families

that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation, were slowly

presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the

double change of self and beholder. Municipal town and rural parish

gradually made fresh threads of connection--gradually, as the old

stocking gave way to the savings-bank, and the worship of the solar

guinea became extinct; while squires and baronets, and even lords who

had once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind, gathered the

faultiness of closer acquaintanceship. Settlers, too, came from

distant counties, some with an alarming novelty of skill, others with

an offensive advantage in cunning. In fact, much the same sort of

movement and mixture went on in old England as we find in older

Herodotus, who also, in telling what had been, thought it well to take

a woman's lot for his starting-point; though Io, as a maiden apparently

beguiled by attractive merchandise, was the reverse of Miss Brooke, and

in this respect perhaps bore more resemblance to Rosamond Vincy, who

had excellent taste in costume, with that nymph-like figure and pure

blindness which give the largest range to choice in the flow and color

of drapery. But these things made only part of her charm. She was

admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in

the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the

accomplished female--even to extras, such as the getting in and out of

a carriage. Mrs. Lemon herself had always held up Miss Vincy as an

example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady for mental

acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was

quite exceptional. We cannot help the way in which people speak of us,

and probably if Mrs. Lemon had undertaken to describe Juliet or Imogen,

these heroines would not have seemed poetical. The first vision of

Rosamond would have been enough with most judges to dispel any

prejudice excited by Mrs. Lemon's praise.

Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable

vision, or even without making the acquaintance of the Vincy family;

for though Mr. Peacock, whose practice he had paid something to enter

on, had not been their doctor (Mrs. Vincy not liking the lowering

system adopted by him), he had many patients among their connections

and acquaintances. For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not

connected or at least acquainted with the Vincys? They were old

manufacturers, and had kept a good house for three generations, in

which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbors more

or less decidedly genteel. Mr. Vincy's sister had made a wealthy match

in accepting Mr. Bulstrode, who, however, as a man not born in the

town, and altogether of dimly known origin, was considered to have done

well in uniting himself with a real Middlemarch family; on the other

hand, Mr. Vincy had descended a little, having taken an innkeeper's

daughter. But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money;

for Mrs. Vincy's sister had been second wife to rich old Mr.

Featherstone, and had died childless years ago, so that her nephews and

nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower. And

it happened that Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Featherstone, two of Peacock's

most important patients, had, from different causes, given an

especially good reception to his successor, who had raised some

partisanship as well as discussion. Mr. Wrench, medical attendant to

the Vincy family, very early had grounds for thinking lightly of

Lydgate's professional discretion, and there was no report about him

which was not retailed at the Vincys', where visitors were frequent.

Mr. Vincy was more inclined to general good-fellowship than to taking

sides, but there was no need for him to be hasty in making any new man

acquaintance. Rosamond silently wished that her father would invite

Mr. Lydgate. She was tired of the faces and figures she had always

been used to--the various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of

phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had known as

boys. She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose

brothers, she felt sure, it would have been possible for her to be more

interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions. But

she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father; and he,

for his part, was in no hurry on the subject. An alderman about to be

mayor must by-and-by enlarge his dinner-parties, but at present there

were plenty of guests at his well-spread table.




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