Page:Middlemarch (Second Edition).djvu/385

 country by standing for Parliament—which, indeed, may also be done on private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr Brooke was at all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope. Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was alarming. “And questions, now,” hinted the demon just waking up in his stomach, “somebody may put questions about the schedules.—Ladislaw,” he continued, aloud, “just hand me the memorandum of the schedules.”

When Mr Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr Standish (decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, “This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than this.” Still, the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable than Mr Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy. He began with some confidence.

“Gentlemen—Electors of Middlemarch!”

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed natural.

“I’m uncommonly glad to be here—I was never so proud and happy in my life—never so happy, you know.”

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away—even couplets from Pope may be but “fallings from us, vanishings,” when fear clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas. Ladislaw, who stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, “it’s all up now. The only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering may answer for once.” Mr Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clues, fell back on himself and his qualifications—always an appropriate graceful subject for a candidate.

“I am a close neighbour of yours, my good friends—you’ve known me on the bench a good while—I’ve always gone a good deal into public questions—machinery, now, and machine-breaking—you’re many of you concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately. It won’t do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on—trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples—that kind of thing—since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over the globe:—‘Observation with extensive view,’ must look everywhere, ‘from China to Peru,’ as somebody says—Johnson, I think, ‘The Rambler,’ you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point—not as far as Peru; but I've not always stayed at home—I saw it wouldn’t do. I've been in the Levant, where some of your