type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that
time. With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see which were
their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures,
of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends
of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a
mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the
advocacy of disagreeable neighbours? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found
themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic
Question many had given up the Pioneer - which had a motto from Charles James
Fox and was in the van of progress - because it had taken Peel's side about the
Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and
Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the Trumpet, which - since its blasts
against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing
who would support whom) - had become feeble in its blowing.
    It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the Pioneer, when the
crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action
on the part of men whose minds had from long experience acquired breadth as well
as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness
as well as energy - in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy
experience of mankind have been the least disposed to share lodgings.
    Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than
usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say
in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question »emanated« from Brooke of
Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought the Pioneer some months ago.
    »That means mischief, eh?« said Mr. Hawley. »He's got the freak of being a
popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse
for him. I've had my eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon.
He's a damned bad landlord. What business has an old county man to come currying
favour with a low set of dark-blue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may
do the writing himself. It would be worth our paying for.«
    »I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can
write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the
London papers. And he means to take very high ground