for each other's skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarch
institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and against
non-professionals given to interference. On this ground they were both in their
hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr. Minchin had never been in
open hostility with him, and never differed from him without elaborate
explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found that Dr. Minchin alone understood
her constitution. A layman who pried into the professional conduct of medical
men, and was always obtruding his reforms, - though he was less directly
embarrassing to the two physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended
paupers by contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as
such; and Dr. Minchin shared folly in the new pique against Bulstrode, excited
by his apparent determination to patronise Lydgate. The long-established
practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller, were just now standing apart and
having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed that Lydgate was a jackanapes,
just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose. To non-medical friends they had already
concurred in praising the other young practitioner, who had come into the town
on Mr. Peacock's retirement without further recommendation than his own merits
and such argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from
his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge. It was
clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast imputations on his
equals, and also to obscure the limit between his own rank as a general
practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in the interest of the profession,
felt bound to maintain its various grades. Especially against a man who had not
been to either of the English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical
and bedside study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in
Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but hardly
sound.
    Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with
Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of interchangeable
names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were enabled to form the same
judgment concerning it.
    Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he entered, »I
go for Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But why take it from the Vicar?
He has none too much - has to insure his life, besides keeping house, and doing
a vicar's charities. Put forty pounds in his pocket and you'll do no harm. He's
a good fellow, is Farebrother, with as little of