by snatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows,

and burying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the
dead of night."

"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond,
half playfully, half anxiously, "else I shall have you getting up

in the night to go to St. Peter's churchyard. You know how angry
you told me the people were about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies

enough already."
"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch

are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors living were fierce
upon Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showed

that Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a poisonous monster.
But the facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got

the better of them."
"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with some interest.

"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did
exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal

of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from
Jerusalem to take a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably."

There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know,
Tertius, I often wish you had not been a medical man."

"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him.
"That is like saying you wish you had married another man."

"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily
have been something else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think

that you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession."
"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate,

with scorn. "It was like their impudence if they said anything
of the sort to you."

"Still," said Rosamond, "I do NOT think it is a nice profession,
dear." We know that she had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.

"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate,
gravely. "And to say that you love me without loving the medical man

in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach
but don't like its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."

"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare
in future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits

of things in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your
dying miserably."

"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstrance
and petting her resignedly.

CHAPTER XLVI.
Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello

que podremos.
Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.

--Spanish Proverb.
While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command,

felt himself struggling for Medical Reform against Middlemarch,
Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious of the national

struggle for another kind of Reform.
By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated

in the House of Commons, there was a new political animation
in Middlemarch, and a new definition of parties which might show

a decided change of balance if a new election came. And there
were some who already predicted this event, declaring that a

Reform Bill would never be carried by the actual Parliament.
This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on to Mr. Brooke as a reason

for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.
"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will.

"The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question
of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long,

and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head.
What we have to work at now is the `Pioneer' and political meetings."

"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here,"
said Mr. Brooke. "Only I want to keep myself independent

about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too far. I want
to take up. Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know,

and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Law--that kind of thing.
But of course I should support Grey."

"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared
to take what the situation offers," said Will. "If everybody

pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the whole question
would go to tatters."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you--I quite take that point of view.
I should put it in that light. I should support Grey, you know.

But I don't want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don't
think Grey would."

"But that is what the country wants,"-said Will. "Else there would
be no meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows

what it's about. It wants to have a House of Commons which is not
weighted with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives

of the other interests. And as to contending for a reform short
of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has

already begun to thunder."
"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that

down, now. We must begin to get documents about the feeling
of the country, as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."

"As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty.
A few rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few

more will show the rate at which the political determination of the
people is growing."

"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is
an idea, now: write it out in the `Pioneer.' Put the figures and

deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce--
and so on. You have a way of putting things. Burke, now:--when I

think of Burke, I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough
to give you, Ladislaw. You'd never get elected, you know.

And we shall always want talent in the House: reform as we will,
we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now,

was really a little like Burke. I want that sort of thing--not ideas,
you know, but a way of putting them."

"Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they
were always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke

at hand."
Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison,

even from Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh
to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and

never to have it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration
for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling

exactly in time is rather fortifying. Will felt that his literary
refinements were usually beyond the limits of Middlemarch perception;

nevertheless, he was beginningthoroughly to like the work
of which when he began he had said to himself rather languidly,

"Why not?"--and he studied the political situation with as ardent
an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism.

It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was,
and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not

at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English
people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably

have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas,
trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding

it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures,
leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all,

self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would
have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general.

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take
the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality

of our action is not a matter of indifference.
Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that

indeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as alone