“Oh, civilization! thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?” Here Mrs. Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which no doubt would have been shared by the bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr. Smith continued unobservant; or, at any rate, regardless.
“What is like unto thee? Thou art the irrigating stream which makest fertile the barren plain. Till thou comest all is dark and dreary; but at thy advent the noontide sun shines out, the earth gives forth her increase; the deep bowels of the rocks render up their tribute. Forms which were dull and hideous become endowed with grace and beauty, and vegetable existence rises to the scale of celestial life. Then, too, Genius appears clad in a panoply of translucent armour, grasping in his hand the whole terrestrial surface, and making every rood of earth subservient to his purposes;—Genius, the child of civilization, the mother of the Arts!”
The last little bit, taken from the Pedigree of Progress, had a great success, and all Barchester went to work with its hands and feet;—all Barchester, except that ill-natured aristocratic front-row together with the three arm-chairs at the corner of it. The aristocratic front-row felt itself to be too intimate with civilization to care much about it; and the three arm-chairs, or rather that special one which contained Mrs. Proudie, considered that there was a certain heathenness, a pagan sentimentality almost amounting to infidelity, contained in the lecturer’s remarks, with which she, a pillar of the Church, could not put up, seated as she was now in public conclave.
“It is to civilization that we must look,” continued Mr. Harold Smith, descending from poetry to prose as a lecturer well knows how, and thereby showing the value of both—“for any material progress in these islands; and—”
“And to Christianity,” shouted Mrs. Proudie, to the great amazement of the assembled people and to the thorough wakening of the bishop, who, jumping up in his chair at the sound of the well-known voice, exclaimed, “Certainly, certainly.”
“Hear, hear, hear,” said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs. Proudie’s school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf she had greatly interested herself.
“Oh, yes, Christianity of course,” said Harold Smith, upon whom the interruption did not seem to operate favourably.
“Christianity and Sabbath-day observance,” exclaimed Mrs. Proudie, who, now that she had obtained the ear of the public, seemed well inclined to keep it. “Let us never forget that these islanders can never prosper unless they keep the Sabbath holy.”
Poor Mr. Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself. He had there, on the table before him, a huge bundle of statistics with which he had meant to convince the reason of his hearers after he had taken full possession of their feelings. But they fell very dull and flat. And at the moment when he was interrupted he was about to explain that that material progress to which he had alluded could not be attained without money; and that it behoved them, the people of Barchester before him, to come forward with their purses like men and brothers. He did also attempt this; but from the moment of that fatal onslaught from the arm-chair, it was clear to him and to every one else, that Mrs. Proudie was now the hero of the hour. His time had gone by, and the people of Barchester did not care a straw for his appeal.
From these causes the lecture was over full twenty minutes earlier than any one had expected, to the great delight of Messrs. Sowerby and Supplehouse, who, on that evening, moved and carried a vote of thanks to Mrs. Proudie. For they had gay doings yet before they went to their beds.