Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/227

 *sive garden of all the virtues; unlovely partisan disputes and recriminations in connection with the one thing that best can symbolize the brotherhood of man.

The distinction must here be made between the official representatives of the Church as such representatives, and as mere human beings. In this discussion therefore clergymen are not cited as cases in point unless they are clearly meant by their authors to be taken as clergy and not as men.

The Chadband of Dickens, for instance, and the Bute Crawley and Charles Honeyman of Thackeray, stand on their own feet, and share the common lot of satirized humanity; neither of these novelists having an arrow from his full quiver for the Church itself. Nor has Mrs. Gaskell, though her North and South hinges on the tragedy of Mr. Dale, an Anglican minister turned Dissenter. George Eliot spares likewise the Institution she had herself outgrown. Her Clerical Lives, her Reverends Irwine and Lyon, such diverse types as the modest Dinah Morris and the dominating Savonarola, are treated sympathetically, as is also the pitiful fanaticism of Lantern Yard. Lytton and Reade too grant the consent implied in silence. But other half speak out, briefly or at length.

Peacock is most impressed with the uselessness of an institution which seems to exist for the gratification of its dignitaries. The candid Mr. Sarcastic, after horrifying Miss Pennylove on the question of auctioning off brides, proceeds in his frank career:

"I irreparably offended the Reverend Dr. Vorax by telling him, that having a nephew, whom I wished to shine in the church, I was on the lookout for a luminous butler, and a cook of solid