Middlesbrough

“ Middle Passage, in the slave-trade the part of the Atlantic stretching between Africa and the West Indies.
Middlesbrough (99) , iron manufacturing and shipping town at the mouth of the Tees, in the N. of Yorkshire, 45 m. N. of York; has also shipbuilding yards and chemical works, and exports coal. It owes its growth to the discovery of one of the largest iron-fields in the country in the Cleveland hills, near at hand, in 1850.
Middlesex (560) , a small county on the N. of the Thames, adjacent to and W. of London; has no hills and no rivers, only undulating pasture land and small streams. ”

“ The village, a place of considerable natural beauty, is a summer resort, and has various manufactures. Other villages in the township are North, East and South Middleboro, and Rock. The township had important herring fisheries in early times and manufactured straw hats (from 1828) and ladies’ dress goods. Middleboro was settled about 1662 under the Indian name Nemasket; became a part of the township of Plymouth in 1663; and in 1669 was incorporated as a separate township, taking its name probably from Middlesbrough, North Riding, York. ”

“ But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better, and especially our end.”
“I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mrs Bulstrode,” said Mrs Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. “Still, we must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you well.” ”

“ While our battalion was at Flushing the Officers frequently visited the town of Middleburgh, the capital of the Island, and pleasantly situated in its centre. It is a clean and very beautiful place, surrounded by gardens and richly improved pleasure grounds, among which are interspersed many handsome buildings and cottages, laid out with a degree of taste and neatness, seldom to be found beyond the boundaries of England. With regard to the town it is perfection itself, free from every nuisance; the houses are well built, the streets wide and regularly paved. ”

“ There was the newly elected mayor of Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town that some called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men. In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner, who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their grandfathers’ furniture. ”

“ Mr Brooke proposes that I should stay in this neighbourhood. He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways."
"Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said Dorothea.
"Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything. And here is something offered to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up. Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away. I belong to nobody anywhere else." ”

“ Looking to the future, we cannot doubt that the Middlesborough district is destined to have no rival in any part of the world, for even now its works compete in magnitude with those of our old iron fields. ”

“ Though it stands in the midst of a flat and dreary country, with good corn-land spread among desert fens, and fewer and smaller trees than ours—for the glory of Middlesex is the noble elms—yet the house has the advantage of a fine rise towards it, and a wide and open view for many miles across the level. ”

“ It is a typical second-class village inn, not overly clean. It appears more of an alehouse than hotel, for a crowd of villagers and farmers is tippling at the bar.
Directly across the river from Leyburn is Middleham, the old-time capital of Wensleydale and one of the quaintest and least modernized towns it was our good fortune to see. The drab-colored buildings straggle up the hill upon whose crest sits Middleham Castle, grim, vast and wholly ruinous. And after wandering through the maze of shattered walls and tottering towers, it seemed to us that here was the very ideal of ruined castles. ”

“ But they listened without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate, though one of them—a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell Middlemarch its duty—spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after him. Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his speech, Mr Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of summons was indifferent. ”

“ Mr Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He had not himself attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had a strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was most happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question—"any public question, you know," Mr Brooke repeated, with his nod of perfect understanding. ”

“ When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome. In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present. Travellers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets ”

“ Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed. “Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I suppose. But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young man must be her son. Who are they, Sir James, do you know?”
“I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and son,” said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded and said—
“Yes, a very decent family—a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing interest. ”

“ I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like better than anything to see him worthy of every one's respect. But please tell him I will not promise to marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is free to choose some one else."
"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly," said Mr Farebrother, putting out his hand to Mary, "and I shall ride back to Middlemarch forthwith. With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. ”

“ I have read the Marwnad on Barbara Middleton; and likewise the piece on Oliver and his men. Ah, it is a funny piece that—he did not like Oliver nor his men.”
“Of what profession are you?” said I; “are you a schoolmaster or apothecary?”
“Neither, sir, neither; I am merely a poor shoemaker.”
“You know a great deal for a shoemaker,” said I.
“Ah, sir; there are many shoemakers in Wales who know much more than I.”
“But not in England,” said I. “Well, farewell.”
“Farewell, sir. When you have any boots to mend, or shoes, sir—I shall be happy to serve you.” ”

“ He is very much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can’t forgive an able man for differing from them. And that money-winning business is really a blot. You don’t, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother’s old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar’s praises. One of the old ladies—Miss Noble, the aunt—is a wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. ”

“ A winter day’s stroll would bring us through its greatest length, and at one point it might be stepped across in a couple of hours. On the other hand, its smaller area has a considerably larger population than Surrey’s, even excluding its bigger half of the Metropolitan area. But more thickly packed as it is with suburbs and villages, farms and factories, Middlesex is not so well off as Surrey for good old independent towns, and for capital has to content itself with the shabby squalor of Brentford. London seems to have cast its shadow on this side so as to stunt the growth of puny boroughs. ”

“ Before noon the next day, everybody in Brookville had been made acquainted with the misfortune of the Middletons; and neighbors came with kind offers, which the old man could not accept. He had settled what to do, he told them, and thought it was the best plan. The white cottage must be sold or rented, and, indeed, he had already dictated a letter, which Sophy had written, to a gentleman in New York, who was looking for a summer residence, and had once expressed himself pleased with the situation of Mr. Middleton’s house, and the scenery about Brookville. ”

“ They were a wretched waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to excuse himself and go.
"You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when the whist-players were settled. "We are very stupid, and you have been used to something quite different."
"I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike," said Lydgate. "But I have noticed that one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same way. ”

“ Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the midnight darkness of Mr Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only three miles off. ”

“ It is as well we are not bound to enter the County of London, since there the Lea would bring us to Hackney Marsh, perhaps the most unlovely spot of Middlesex soil—one which some examiners, indeed, might propose to bracket with Staines Moor, that at least deserves a proxime accessit.
Such blotches, however, are exceptional, and between those dismal flats on the most distant edges of the county so recklessly libelled as “all ugly,” it has been shown how one can find much pleasant and not a little charming scenery of a truly English type. ”

“ This castle of Middleham is square and stern; more strong than beautiful. Its keep is Norman, and is the work of a Fitzranulph of the twelfth century; but the towered wall that hems it round so closely was built by the Nevilles, who lived here for many years in princely state. The great Earl of Warwick, when he was not making kings—and, indeed, sometimes when he was—chose this to be a centre of his pomp and power; and one of the kings he made, Edward IV., is said to have been imprisoned here for a short time. ”

“ If anything exciting came to pass at Sunbury, these odd people shrugged their shoulders, and talked about Bow Street, and Newgate, and the like; as if they belonged to Middlesex, and we to London. However, there can be no doubt which is the finer village.
I was much dissatisfied with myself, when I came to think of it, for allowing as I did this boatman’s story so to dwell upon my mind, that even the fair invalid in the stern lost many little due attentions. But happily she fell fast asleep, being sweetly lulled by the soft fine air, and the dreamy melody of waters. ”

“ This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on to Mr Brooke as a reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.
“Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year,” said Will. “The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. What we have to work at now is the ‘Pioneer’ and political meetings.” ”

“ If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine-glass to the light and look judicial. Such joys are reserved for conscious merit. Hence Mr Bulstrode’s close attention was not agreeable to the publicans and sinners in Middlemarch ”

“ I can be one little corner; there's all Middlefield beside. Isn't there work for you as a citizen and as a Christian in our little town? Suppose you go to Middlefield with the same motives that you would go on a mission to India, Africa, or the Isles of the Sea! ”

“ Middlesex has other hills as high and bold as Hampstead, which owes its eminent amenity to a topping of Bagshot sand, here rarer than in Surrey, giving a dry and broken surface, natural nursery for heath and copsewood. ”

“ Mr Brooke, necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature of the Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side of the Bill—which were remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped his ears. Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel, could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes. There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty business ”