There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. … We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing to escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons.

I should think that this paragraph alone should justify my contention that the Barchester novels, but particularly Barchester Towers, should be required study in all seminaries.

Mr. Slope goes on to use his position as chaplain to the bishop in a power struggle with Mrs. Proudie. He loses. He learns that Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor Bold, recently widowed in a death between novels, has an income of a thousand pounds a year. (The mortality risk of the period between novels was significant in the Barsetshire and Palliser series, leading to the deaths of John Bold, Eleanor's suitor and husband in The Warden, and Lady Glencora Palliser, who did not survive the period between The Prime Minister and The Duke's Children.) Having promised Mr. Harding's former position as Warden of Hiram's Hospital to Mr. Quiverful, whose twelve children in addition to his wife and himself provided "fourteen arguments in favour of Mr. Quiverful's claims," he then reverses his field and indicates to Mrs. Bold that through his efforts and kind services her father may yet be restored to his former position. But when Eleanor shows his subsequent letter on the subject to her father, Mr. Harding finds a reference to his daughter's "silken tresses," and Mr. Slope's scheme dies aborning.

Although Mrs. Proudie reigns triumphant throughout Barchester Towers and goes on undeterred in subsequent Barsetshire novels, the reader derives some consolation from Mr. Slope's downfall. Indeed, he is refused by three women: one of the Bishop's daughters; Eleanor Bold (with a slap on the ear); and the infamous Signora Neroni. Ah, Signora Neroni! Somehow she and her family come across with more charm in the video presentation than in my reading of the book and listening to it on tape a few years ago. As feckless foils to the saintly Mr. Harding, and as legitimate targets for reform of the church, the reader may have limited patience with them. But brought to the screen by buoyant actors, they display the charm that enabled them to get by with so much in Barchester society. Trollope tells us that their heartlessness was accompanied by such good nature as to make itself "but little noticeable to the world." This introductory comment was, of course, absent from the video presentation, leaving the viewer to draw his own conclusions. But the mind of this puritanical reader, I'm afraid, was poisoned by the author's observation.

The father, Dr. Vesey Stanhope, is summoned home from Italy by the new bishop. Dr. Stanhope, it turns out, had gone to Italy for his health; he had had a sore throat twelve years earlier and had never returned. He brings with him his wife, two daughters and a son. The card of the younger daughter is decorated with a coronet, and it reads "La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni—Nata Stanhope." She is somewhat indifferent to her situation of having married a captain of no birth and no property, leaving her with a young daughter but no husband, and a knee injury that she attributed to ascending a ruin, leaving her to walk with "the grace of a hunchback." And so she has chosen to be carried everywhere she goes.

Her brother Bertie, the son of a man without fortune, feels no obligation to earn his own bread. Madeline and Bertie prove to be rolling cannons on the decks of Barchester. The beautiful Madeline has separate and conspicuous tête-á-têtes with the Bishop, Mr. Slope, Squire Thorne, and a newly arrived clergyman from Oxford, Francis Arabin. Bertie distinguishes himself at Mrs. Proudie's reception by remarking to the bishop that he once had thoughts of being a bishop himself. "That is, a parson—a parson first, you know, and a bishop afterwards. If I had once begun, I'd have stuck to it. But on the whole, I like the Church of Rome the best."

But one comes closest to feeling some sympathy for Mr. Slope—whom the author confesses that he himself does not like—when Signora Neroni uses an audience for the purpose of humiliating him. (This is after Mr. Slope has proposed unsuccessfully to Signora Neroni and to Eleanor Bold, and at a time when he has had his friend Tom Towers of The Jupiter write in its pages that Mr. Slope would be the best candidate to replace the lately deceased Dean of the Chapter—a position that is to be offered to Mr. Harding and eventually accepted by Mr. Arabin.) Her morning levée includes Mr. Thorne; Mr. Arabin ("It may seem strange that he should thus come dangling about Madame Neroni because he was in love with Mrs. Bold; but was nevertheless the fact"); Mr. Slope; and a couple of other young men about the city.

Bertie and Charlotte are spectators as she follows one thrust at Mr. Slope with another, saying that everybody knows that he is to be the new dean, passing over old men like her father and Archdeacon. She then taunts him with having been refused by Mrs. Bold, singing

It's gude to be off with the old love—Mr. Slope,
Before you are on with the new.
'Ha, ha, ha!'

Mr. Slope's sins were such as to merit little mercy from the court of public and private opinion. And perhaps his punishment did fit his crime. But his punishment was severe.