In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his nieceDorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of heruncle's talk or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the more for thetime when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes.

She wasregarded as an heiress; for not only had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from their parents,but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worthabout three thousand a-year-a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussingMr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeousplutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life.