MIDDLEMARCH

By George Eliot

To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes,

in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.

PRELUDE

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious

mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt,

at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled

with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking

forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother,

to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled

from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns,

but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic

reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from

their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning.

Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were

many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a

brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel;

and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction,

some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile

self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.

She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.