George Eliot: Middlemarch

BOOK I. MISS BROOKE. 7. CHAPTER VII. (continued)

But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by precedent--namely, that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not have made any great difference. To think with pleasure of his niece's husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thing--to make a Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.