“I know that I must expect trials, uncle.  Marriage is a state of higher duties.  I never thought of it as mere personal ease,” said poor Dorothea.

“Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing.  I can see that Casaubon’s ways might suit you better than Chettam’s.  And you shall do as you like, my dear.  I would not hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no knowing how anything may turn out.  You have not the same tastes as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholar—­who may be a bishop—­that kind of thing—­may suit you better than Chettam.  Chettam is a good fellow, a good sound-hearted fellow, you know; but he doesn’t go much into ideas.  I did, when I was his age.  But Casaubon’s eyes, now.  I think he has hurt them a little with too much reading.”

“I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me to help him,” said Dorothea, ardently.

“You have quite made up your mind, I see.  Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket.”  Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, “There is not too much hurry, my dear.  Think about it, you know.”

When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly spoken strongly:  he had put the risks of marriage before her in a striking manner.  It was his duty to do so.  But as to pretending to be wise for young people,—­no uncle, however much he had travelled in his youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with celebrities now deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to Chettam.  In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke’s mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.

CHAPTER V.

“Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting:  they are most part lean, dry, ill-colored . . . and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies.  If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas’ works; and tell me whether those men took pains.”—­BURTON’S Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.

This was Mr. Casaubon’s letter.

My dear miss Brooke,—­I have your guardian’s permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart.  I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you.  For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent