ole business." The way in which he used to
ridicule the Papal religion in his wife's presence often jarred on his
friends, who thought that however much he might disapprove of it, he
ought, for her sake, to have restrained his tongue. But he did not spare
other religious bodies either. He wanted to know, for instance, what the
clergy of the Church of England did for the L3,500,000 a year "wasted
on them," while he summed up the Nonconformists in the scornful phrase:
"Exeter Hall!" He considered anthropomorphism to explain satisfactorily
not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies [526] of the
Nights, but also angel and devil. Both Arbuthnot and Payne regarded him
as a Mohammedan. Another friend described him as a "combination of an
Agnostic, a Theist and an Oriental mystic." Over and over again he said
to his cousin, St. George Burton, "The only real religion in the world
is that of Mohammed. Religions are climatic. The Protestant faith suits
England." Once he said "I should not care to go to Hell, for I should
meet all my relations there, nor to Heaven, because I should have to
avoid so many friends." Lady Burton, who prayed daily "that the windows
of her husband's soul might be opened," relied particularly on the
mediation of "Our Lady of Dale"--the Dale referred to being a
village near Ilkestone, Derbyshire, which once boasted a magnificent
Premonstratensian monastery, [527] and she paid for as many as a hundred
masses to be said consecutively in the little "Church of Our Lady and
St. Thomas," [528] at Ilkeston, in order to hasten that event. "Some
three months before Sir Richard's death," writes Mr. P. P. Cautley, the
Vice-Consul at Trieste, to me, "I was seated at Sir Richard's tea table
with our clergy man, and the talk turning on religion, Sir Richard
declared, 'I am an atheist, but I was brought up in the Church of
England, and that is officially my church.' [529] Perhaps, however, this
should be considered to prove, not that he was an atheist, but that he
could not resist the pleasure of shocking the clergyman."

146. Burton as a Writer.

On Burton as a writer we have already made some comments. One goes to
his books with confidence; in the assurance that whatever ever he saw
is put down. Nothing is hidden and there is no attempt to Munchausenize.
His besetting literary sin, as we said, was prolixity. Any one of his
books reduced to one-quarter, or better, one-sixth the size, and served
up