Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/236



"My experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned—he's dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church; the cause of the poor—the people. He is a creature of the moneyed class. I look on him as a pretender."

In his subtle way Meredith satirizes the Catholic Church by having the Countess de Saldar take refuge in and approve of it. Its great asset is that its democracy includes even tailors. That it is the only true spiritual home for a true gentleman she proves by citing an example. A noble knight does not hesitate at telling a flat falsehood to save a lady, being safe in morality because "his priest was handy." Her nature is defined as the truly religious, that is, one with need of vicarious strength and a sense of renewed absolution. Another exponent is Constance Asper, in Diana of the Crossways, whose boudoir was filled with expensive Catholic equipments, affording "every invitation to meditate in luxury on an ascetic religiousness."

Butler was not content to view the Church from his external position with the silence of George Eliot or the casual comments of Meredith. The intensity of his iconoclasm demanded full expression,—kept, however, from crudeness by his ironic finish, and from injustice by his fundamental reasonableness. In Erewhon his chief point is the perfunctory character of established religion. The Erewhonians have two distinct economic currencies, one of which is supposed to be the system, and is patronized by all who wished to be considered respectable. Yet its funds have no direct value in the community, whose actual business is conducted on the other commercial system. The Musical Banks excel in architecture, and keep up a routine of receiving and paying checks. But their patrons are for the most part ladies and some students from the College of Unreason. Mrs. Nosnibor, a staunch share