from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest,
what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings or
capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors;
what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the
years are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles
against universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him,
and bring his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is
important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think
he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want
of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with
perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor
to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.
Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own world; if he was
liable to think that others were providentially made for him,
and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness
for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not
quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals,
claims some of our pity.

Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him
more nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto
shown their disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I
feel more tenderly towards his experience of success than towards
the disappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the
day fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find
his spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial
garden scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be
bordered with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him
than the accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand. He did
not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another,