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"Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth

Draw lots withbad air, ran risk of pestilence;

Or, lacking liuish with the scurvy"

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the

chaplaincy gathered any practical i himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which

side he should give his vote It would really have been a matter of

total indifference to him--that is to say, he would have taken the iven his vote for the appointment of Tyke without

any hesitation--if he had not cared personally for Mr Farebrother

But his liking for the Vicar of St Botolph's greith growing

acquaintanceship That, entering into Lydgate's position as a

new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr

Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain

his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which

Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to It went along with other points

of conduct in Mr Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made

his character resemble those southern landscapes which seerandeur and social slovenliness Very few men could

have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and

sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life rather

uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs are

so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interested

desires in a pretext of better motives In these matters he was

conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps

the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical

strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve

their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account

for their actions Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like

the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons

were delivered without book People outside his parish went to hear

him; and, since to fill the church was always the yround for a careless sense

of superiority Besides, he was a likable rins of suppressed bitterness or other

conversational flavors which ate liked hi uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the

chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper

business of his, but likely enough never to vex hiate, at Mr Bulstrode's request, was laying down plans

for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the tere