Points of Friction
summate care! A churchman who, as Sir Leslie Stephen somewhat petulantly observes, "gives no indication of having any religious views whatever, beyond a dislike to dissenters." A solidly respectable member of provincial clerical society, ambitious, worldly, prizing wealth, honouring rank, unspiritual, unprogressive,—but none the less a man who would have proved his worth in the hour of England's trial.
It is a testimony to the power of fiction that, having read with breathless concern and through countless pages Mr. Britling's reflections on the war, my soul suddenly cried out within me for the reflections of Archdeacon Grantly. Mr. Britling is an acute and sensitive thinker. The archdeacon's mental processes are of the simplest. Mr. Britling has winged his triumphant flight from "the clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian England." The archdeacon is
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