ll put him somewhere else where
he'll be as bad. I tell you that that man, to all intents and
purposes, will be Bishop of Barchester!" And again Dr. Grantly
raised his hat and rubbed his hand thoughtfully and sadly over his
head.

"Impudent scoundrel!" he continued after a while. "To dare to
cross-examine me about the Sunday-schools in the diocese, and Sunday
travelling too: I never in my life met his equal for sheer impudence.
Why, he must have thought we were two candidates for ordination!"

"I declare I thought Mrs. Proudie was the worst of the two," said Mr.
Harding.

"When a woman is impertinent, one must only put up with it, and
keep out of her way in future, but I am not inclined to put up
with Mr. Slope. 'Sabbath travelling!'" and the doctor attempted to
imitate the peculiar drawl of the man he so much disliked: "'Sabbath
travelling!' Those are the sort of men who will ruin the Church of
England and make the profession of a clergyman disreputable. It is
not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of
canting, low-bred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us;
men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or
doctrine, but who take up some popular cry, as this fellow has done
about 'Sabbath travelling.'"

Dr. Grantly did not again repeat the question aloud, but he did so
constantly to himself: What were they to do with Mr. Slope? How was
he openly, before the world, to show that he utterly disapproved of
and abhorred such a man?

Hitherto Barchester had escaped the taint of any extreme rigour of
church doctrine. The clergymen of the city and neighbourhood, though
very well inclined to promote High Church principles, privileges, and
prerogatives, had never committed themselves to tendencies which are
somewhat too loosely called Puseyite practices. They all preached in
their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them; they wore
ordinary black cloth waistcoats; they had no candles on their altars,
either lighted or unlighted; they made no private genuflexions, and
were contented to confine themselves to such ceremonial observances
as had been in vogue for the last hundred years. The services were
decently and demurely read in their parish churches, chanting was
confined to the cathedral, and the science of intoning was unknown.
One young man who had come direct from Oxford as a curate to
Plumstead had, after the lapse of two or three Sundays, made a
fai