First sentences: Middlemarch by George Eliot

This site is undergoing some revision; a temporary archive of the first sentence pieces can be found here. 

Where do we begin on this one? Middlemarch is one of those books that mounts its beginning slowly: two pages of 'Prelude' that set out its central theme - an infinitesimal proportion of the whole massive tome - before drawing the curtain back on the opening chapter. Dorothea Brooke is our central character in a large and closely-studied cast, and when we first see her, she is carefu...