d various scientific matters, and he is
hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position. He has no
money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led him into
card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for
money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that takes him into company
a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet,
with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most
blameless men I ever knew. He has neither venom nor doubleness in him,
and those often go with a more correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."

"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into
plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said
Dorothea, meditatively. She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a
strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an
impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal
figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good
deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people
uncomfortably--aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!--he
ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the
birds."

"True," said Dorothea. "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our
farmers and laborers get from their teaching. I have been looking into
a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at
Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the
Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a
wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean
that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most
people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than
to condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear
him preach."