 in this great harvest of truth was no
light or speedy work. His notes already made a formidable range of volumes, but
the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous still-accumulating
results and bring them, like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit a
little shelf. In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself
nearly as he would have done to a fellow-student, for he had not two styles of
talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he
always gave the English with scrupulous care, but he would probably have done
this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of his
acquaintances as of »lords, knyghtes, and other noble and worthi men, that conne
Latyn but lytille.«
    Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this conception.
Here was something beyond the shallows of ladies'-school literature: here was a
living Bossuet, whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted
piety; here was a modern Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint.
    The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning, for when
Dorothea was impelled to open her mind on certain themes which she could speak
of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton, especially on the secondary
importance of ecclesiastical forms and articles of belief compared with that
spiritual religion, that submergence of self in communion with Divine perfection
which seemed to her to be expressed in the best Christian books of
widely-distant ages, she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener who understood her at
once, who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when duly
tempered with wise conformity, and could mention historical examples before
unknown to her.
    »He thinks with me,« said Dorothea to herself, »or rather, he thinks a whole
world of which my thought is but a poor twopenny mirror. And his feelings too,
his whole experience - what a lake compared with my little pool!«
    Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than
other young ladies of her age. Signs are small measurable things, but
interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every
sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and coloured by a
diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. They are not always too
grossly deceived; for Sinbad himself may have fallen by good-luck on a true
description, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right
conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding
