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.

CHAPTER XL.

    Wise in his daily work was he: 
      To fruits of diligence,
    And not to faiths or polity,
      He plied his utmost sense. 
    These perfect in their little parts,
      Whose work is all their prize—­
    Without them how could laws, or arts,
      Or towered cities rise?

In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in was set up.  The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth’s breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were:  father, mother, and five of the children.  Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father’s disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling “business.”

The letters had come—­nine costly letters, for which the postman had been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other, sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off a large red seal unbroken, which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.

The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed Caleb’s absorption except shaking the table when he was writing.

Two letters of the nine had been for Mary.  After reading them, she had passed them to her mother, and sat playing with her tea-spoon absently, till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she had kept on her lap during breakfast.