. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling
rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or
fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of
hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of the solar
system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?
Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener
interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings
or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors;
what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the years
are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against
universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring
his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is important in his
own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place
in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer
him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held
sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he
may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own
world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made
for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness
for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite
alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims
some of our pity.

Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more
nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their
disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more
tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the
disappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the day
fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his
spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden
scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered
with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him than the
accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand. He did not confess to
himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise
that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won
delight,--which he had also regarded as an object to be found by
search. It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying
the contrary; but knowing classical passages,