'All that in woman is adored In thy fair self I find— For the whole sex can but afford The handsome and the kind. ' —SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. The question whether Mr.
Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplain to the hospital was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers; and Lydgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on the power exercised in the town by Mr. Bulstrode.
The banker was evidently a ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among his supporters there were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was a compromise, and who frankly stated their impression that the general scheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade, required you to hold a candle to the devil.
Mr.
Bulstrode’s power was not due simply to his being a country banker, who knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town and could touch the springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficence that was at once ready and severe—ready to confer obligations, and severe in watching the result.
He had gathered, as an industrious man always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute and abundant.
He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker’s son, and he would watch over Tegg’s church-going; he would defend Mrs.
Strype the washerwoman against Stubbs’s unjust exaction on the score of her drying-ground, and he would himself scrutinize a calumny against Mrs. Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and after.
In this way a man gathers a domain in his neighbors’ hope and fear as well as gratitude; and power, when once it