Middlemarch
PRELUDE
Who that cares much to know the history of man, andhow the mysterious mixture behaves under the varyingexperiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on thelife of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentlenessat the thought of the little girl walking forth one morninghand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seekmartyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddledfrom rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as twofawns, but with human hearts, already beating to anational idea; until domestic reality met them in the shapeof uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve.That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’spassionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what weremany-volumed romances of chivalry and the socialconquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quicklyburned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soaredafter some illimitable satisfaction, some object whichwould never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyondself. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.3
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