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66 directions so received, the Archbishop of York were to declare at a Church Congress his belief that his esteemed brother, whose services to the Church were beyond all praise, had written the missives himself, an expedient “which I personally hold to be illegitimate,” but into the details of which he begged the Congress not to pry: suppose, then, that the Archbishop of Canterbury on his part declared himself, like Mr. Pickwick, “much gratified with the candid explanation of his hon. riendfriend [sic],” that he “merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view”—supposing all this, can you imagine the Church Congress rising as one man to “bury” the dispute, and “join hands” with the embracing disputants?

Probably not. But then, as Mrs. Besant remarked, the “standards of the world” are “lower” than those of the Theosophical Society—and of the “Pickwick Club.”

Nevertheless, I must ask leave to break in on the harmonious scene with a few troublesome questions.