 own opinion. On the other hand,
nobody had ever heard of a Dodson who had ruined himself: it was not the way of
that family.
    If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and Tullivers had been
reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt and high prices, you will infer from
what you already know concerning the state of society in St Ogg's, that there
had been no highly modifying influence to act on them in their maturer life. It
was still possible, even in that later time of anti-Catholic preaching, for
people to hold many pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-people
notwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise at the fact that Mr.
Tulliver, though a regular churchgoer, recorded his vindictiveness on the
fly-leaf of his Bible. It was not that any harm could be said concerning the
vicar of that charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged: he was a
man of excellent family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant pursuits, - had
taken honours, and held a fellowship. Mr. Tulliver regarded him with dutiful
respect, as he did everything else belonging to the church-service; but he
considered that church was one thing and common-sense another, and he wanted
nobody to tell him what common-sense was. Certain seeds which are required to
find a nidus for themselves under unfavourable circumstances, have been supplied
by nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on very
unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr.
Tulliver had apparently been destitute of any corresponding provision, and had
slipped off to the winds again, from a total absence of hooks.
 

                                   Chapter II

                     The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first
shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an
excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that
follows - in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive
intensity that counteracts its pain - in the time when day follows day in dull
unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine; - it is then that despair
threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye
and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall
give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
    This time of utmost need was come to Maggie, with her short span of thirteen
years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that early experience of
