BOOK IV. THREE LOVE PROBLEMS.
CHAPTER XXXIV.“1 st Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws,
Carry no weight, no force.
2 d Gent. But levity
Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
For power finds its place in lack of power;
Advance is cession, and the driven ship
May run aground because the helmsman’s thought
Lacked force to balance opposites.”
It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried. In the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny, and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick churchyard. Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a gleam to light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand w
