Page 512 - middlemarch

elections. Let ‘em quash every pocket borough to-morrow,
and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom—
they’ll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament.
I go upon facts.’
Mr. Hawley’s disgust at the notion of the ‘Pioneer’ be-
ing edited by an emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively
political— as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should pro-
trude 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 unpleas-
ant 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 ex-
pected 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 obstruc-
tion, 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 ar-
tistic 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 it-
self to quotation and general effectiveness of treatment.

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