this,« said Lydgate. »A fine fever hospital in addition to the old infirmary
might be the nucleus of a medical school here, when once we get our medical
reforms; and what would do more for medical education than the spread of such
schools over the country? A born provincial man who has a grain of public spirit
as well as a few ideas, should do what he can to resist the rush of everything
that is a little better than common towards London. Any valid professional aims
may often find a freer, if not a richer field, in the provinces.«
    One of Lydgate's gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet capable
of becoming very low and gentle at the right moment. About his ordinary bearing
there was a certain fling, a fearless expectation of success, a confidence in
his own powers and integrity much fortified by contempt for petty obstacles or
seductions of which he had had no experience. But this proud openness was made
lovable by an expression of unaffected good-will. Mr. Bulstrode perhaps liked
him the better for the difference between them in pitch and manners; he
certainly liked him the better, as Rosamond did, for being a stranger in
Middlemarch. One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be
a better man.
    »I shall rejoice to furnish your zeal with fuller opportunities,« Mr.
Bulstrode answered; »I mean, by confiding to you the superintendence of my new
hospital, should a maturer knowledge favour that issue, for I am determined that
so great an object shall not be shackled by our two physicians. Indeed, I am
encouraged to consider your advent to this town as a gracious indication that a
more manifest blessing is now to be awarded to my efforts, which have hitherto
been much withstood. With regard to the old infirmary, we have gained the
initial point - I mean your election. And now I hope you will not shrink from
incurring a certain amount of jealousy and dislike from your professional
brethren by presenting yourself as a reformer.«
    »I will not profess bravery,« said Lydgate, smiling, »but I acknowledge a
good deal of pleasure in fighting, and I should not care for my profession, if I
did not believe that better methods were to be found and enforced there as well
as everywhere else.«
    »The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir,« said
the banker. »I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our
medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here.