 be wrought into their purposes,
contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in which life had been shaping
him for that instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, counted on swallowing
Lydgate and assimilating him very comfortably.
 

                                  Chapter XVI

 »All that in woman is adored
 In thy fair self I find -
 For the whole sex can but afford
 The handsome and the kind.«
                                                             Sir Charles Sedley.
 
The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplain to the
hospital was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers; and Lydgate heard it
discussed in a way that threw much light on the power exercised in the town by
Mr. Bulstrode. The banker was evidently a ruler, but there was an opposition
party, and even among his supporters there were some who allowed it to be seen
that their support was a compromise, and who frankly stated their impression
that the general scheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade,
required you to hold a candle to the devil.
    Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a country banker, who
knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town and could touch the
springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficence that was at once
ready and severe - ready to confer obligations, and severe in watching the
result. He had gathered, as an industrious man always at his post, a chief share
in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute
and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the
shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Tegg's churchgoing; he would defend
Mrs. Strype the washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her
drying-ground, and he would himself scrutinise a calumny against Mrs. Strype.
His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the
circumstances both before and after. In this way a man gathers a domain in his
neighbours' hope and fear as well as gratitude; and power, when once it has got
into that subtle region, propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to
its external means. It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power
as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through a great
deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives,
and make clear to himself what God's glory required. But, as we have seen, his
motives were not always rightly appreciated. There were many crass minds in
Middlemarch whose reflective scales could only weigh things in the lump
