ns about the schedules.--Ladislaw,"
he continued, aloud, "just hand me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite
loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other
expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr. Standish
(decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, "This looks
dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than this." Still,
the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable
than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left
hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his
eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff
waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy. He began
with some confidence.

"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed
natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy in my
life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for,
unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets from Pope
may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a
glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas. Ladislaw, who
stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, "it's all up now. The
only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering
may answer for once." Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews,
fell back on himself and his qualifications--always an appropriate
graceful subject for a candidate.

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known me on
the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into public
questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many of you
concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately. It
won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--trade,
manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind of
thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over the
globe:--'Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere, 'from
China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, 'The Rambler,' you
know. That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far as
Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do. I've
been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--a