r" being edited by an
emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political--as if a tortoise
of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and
become rampant--was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members
of Mr. Brooke's own family. The result had oozed forth gradually, like
the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of
manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal
remedy. The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will
Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in
the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which
did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his
invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world
at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had
hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.

The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which
proved greater even than he had anticipated. For it seemed that Will
was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which
Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready
at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them
in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to
quotation and general effectiveness of treatment.

"He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Brooke took an
opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon. "I don't
mean as to anything objectionable--laxities or atheism, or anything of
that kind, you know--Ladislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are
good--indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he
has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation--a
fine thing under guidance--under guidance, you know. I think I shall
be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because
he is a relation of yours, Casaubon."

If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr.
Brooke's speech, Mr. Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some
occupation at a great distance from Lowick. He had disliked Will while
he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will
had declined his help. That is the way with us when we have any uneasy
jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the
burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (who