were to be the
doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had
become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had
made the ambition and the labour of her husband's life. It was not wonderful
that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer
than his: for she looked with unbiassed comparison and healthy sense at
probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism. And now she pictured to
herself the days, and months, and years which she must spend in sorting what
might be called shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself
a mosaic wrought from crushed ruins - sorting them as food for a theory which
was already withered in the birth like an elfin child. Doubtless a vigorous
error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth a-breathing: the quest of
gold being at the same time a questioning of substances, the body of chemistry
is prepared for its soul, and Lavoisier is born. But Mr. Casaubon's theory of
the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise
itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no
more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in
sound, until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a
method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming
anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog:
it was as free from interruption as a plan for threading the stars together. And
Dorothea had so often had to check her weariness and impatience over this
questionable riddle-guessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of the
fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier! She could
understand well enough now why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly
the only hope left that his labours would ever take a shape in which they could
be given to the world. At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even her
aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually the terrible
stringency of human need - the prospect of a too speedy death --
    And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past -
nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past:
the lonely labour, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of
self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the
sword visibly trembling above him! And had she not wished to marry him that she
might help him in his