Fri, 10/12/2012 - 19:56 — davidchen1
It will, however, give you no trouble to write another article next week in which we, or some of us, shall be twitted with an unseemly apathy in matters of our vocation. It will not fall on you to reconcile the discrepancy; your readers will never ask you how the poor parson is to be urgent in season and out of season and yet never come in contact with men who think widely differently from him. You, when you condemn this foreign treaty, or that official arrangement, will have to incur no blame for the graver faults of any different measure. It is so easy to condemn — and so pleasant too, for eulogy charms no listeners as detraction does.”
Eleanor only half-followed him in his raillery, but she caught his meaning. “I know I ought to apologize for presuming to criticize you,” she said, “but I was thinking with sorrow of the ill-will that has lately come among us at Barchester, and I spoke more freely than I should have done.”
“Peace on earth and goodwill among men, are, like heaven, promises for the future;” said he, following rather his own thoughts than hers. “When that prophecy is accomplished, there will no longer be any need for clergymen.”
Here they were interrupted by the archdeacon, whose voice was heard from the cellar shouting to the vicar.
“Arabin, Arabin,”— and then, turning to his wife, who was apparently at his elbow —“where has he gone to? This cellar is perfectly abominable. It would be murder to put a bottle of wine into it till it has been roofed, walled, and floored.