in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a scholarly
education, and launching him respectably. I am therefore bound to fulfil the
expectation so raised,« said Mr. Casaubon, putting his conduct in the light of
mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which Dorothea noticed with admiration.
    »He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a Mungo
Park,« said Mr. Brooke. »I had a notion of that myself at one time.«
    »No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our
geognosis: that would be a special purpose which I could recognise with some
approbation, though without felicitating him on a career which so often ends in
premature and violent death. But so far is he from having any desire for a more
accurate knowledge of the earth's surface, that he said he should prefer not to
know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions
preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.«
    »Well, there is something in that, you know,« said Mr. Brooke, who had
certainly an impartial mind.
    »It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and
indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury for him
in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far submissive to ordinary
rule as to choose one.«
    »Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness,« said
Dorothea, who was interesting herself in finding a favourable explanation.
»Because the law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake,
should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.«
    »Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly
determined in his aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady application,
and to that kind of acquirement which is needful instrumentally, but is not
charming or immediately inviting to self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him
on what Aristotle has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of
any work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or
acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have pointed to
my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory to a
work not yet accomplished. But in vain. To careful reasoning of this kind he
replies by calling himself Pegasus, and every form of prescribed work harness.«
    Celia laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say
something quite amusing.
    »Well, you