However, Ladislaw’s coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart, which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place, commanding a large area in front and two converging streets.  It was a fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful:  there was some prospect of an understanding between Bagster’s committee and Brooke’s, to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a Liberal lawyer, and such manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the Green Dragon.  Mr. Brooke, conscious of having weakened the blasts of the “Trumpet” against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his buff-colored waistcoat.  But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

“This looks well, eh?” said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered.  “I shall have a good audience, at any rate.  I like this, now—­ this kind of public made up of one’s own neighbors, you know.”

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him than if he had been sent in a box from London.  But they listened without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate, one of them—­a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell Middlemarch its duty—­spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after him.  Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of summons was indifferent.

“I’ll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw,” he said, with an easy air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed him the supposed fortifier.  It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no great interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended to scatter his energies instead of collecting them.  Pray pity him:  so many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds! whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his country by standing for Parliament—­which, indeed, may also be done on private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.  Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was alarming.  “And questions, now,” hinted the demon just waking up in his stomach, “somebody may put questions about the schedules.—­Ladislaw,” he continued, aloud, “just hand me the memorandum of the schedules.”