Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself.  A model clergyman, like a model doctor, ought to think his own profession the finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his moral pathology and therapeutics.  He only said, “What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding you?”

“That I don’t teach his opinions—­which he calls spiritual religion; and that I have no time to spare.  Both statements are true.  But then I could make time, and I should be glad of the forty pounds.  That is the plain fact of the case.  But let us dismiss it.  I only wanted to tell you that if you vote for your arsenic-man, you are not to cut me in consequence.  I can’t spare you.  You are a sort of circumnavigator come to settle among us, and will keep up my belief in the antipodes.  Now tell me all about them in Paris.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

    “Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
     Draw lots with meaner hopes:  heroic breasts,
     Breathing bad air, ran risk of pestilence;
     Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
     May languish with the scurvy.”

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without telling 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 more convenient side, and given 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 grew with 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 seem divided between natural grandeur 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