Sometimes when their political
patrons quarrel over a pair of mediocrities, a saintly man who is either
very old or very ill like Bishop Crawshay is appointed as a stop-gap."
"Yes," the Rector agreed. "But our present bishops are only one more
aspect of Victorian materialism. The whole of contemporary society can
be criticized in the same way. After all, we get the bishops we deserve,
just as we get the politicians we deserve and the generals we deserve
and the painters we deserve."
"I don't think that's any excuse for the bishops. I sometimes dream of
worming myself up and stopping at nothing in order to be made a bishop,
and then when I have the mitre at last of appearing in my true colours."
"Our Protestant brethren think that is what many of our right reverend
fathers in God do now," the Rector laughed.
These discussions might have continued for ever without taking Mark any
further. His failure to experience Oxford had deprived him of the
opportunity to whet his opinions upon the grindstone of debate, and
there had been no time for academic argument in the three years of
Keppel Street. In Wych-on-the-Wold there never seemed much else to do
but argue. It was one of the effects of leaving, or rather of seeing
destroyed, a society that was obviously performing useful work and
returning to a society that, so far as Mark could observe performed no
kind of work whatever.
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