g religion which
does nothing of which society would disapprove, but does not break its
heart in trying to found the kingdom of God on earth.

All her relations with life and society would be blameless, orthodox,
ladylike and thoroughly English. As a wife she would preach submission
in public and practice domination and the moral repression belonging
to the superior being in private. As a mother she would take care
to have experienced nurses and well-bred governesses, who would look
after the children properly, when she would wash her hands of further
trouble and responsibility, save to teach them good manners at
luncheon and self-control in their evening visit to the drawing-room
for the "children's half hour" before dinner. As the mistress of an
establishment she would be strict, demanding perfect purity in the
morals of her servants, not suffering waste, nor followers, nor
kitchen amusements that she knew of, nor kitchen individuality anyhow.
Her servants would be her serfs, and she would assume to have bought
them by food and wages in soul as well as body, in mind as well as
muscle. She would give broken meat in moderation to the deserving
poor, but she would let those who are not deserving do the best they
could with want at home and inclemency abroad; and she would have
called it fostering vice had she fed the husbandless mother when
hungry or clothed the drunkard's children when naked. She would never
be talked about for extremes or eccentricities of any kind; and the
world would be forced to mention her with respect when it mentioned
her at all, having indeed no desire to do otherwise. For she was of
the kind dear to the heart of England--one of those who are called the
salt of the earth, and who are assumed to keep society safe and
pure. She was incredulous of science, contemptuous of superstition,
impatient of new ideas--appreciating art, but holding artists as
inferior creatures, like actors, acrobats and newspaper writers. She
was loyal to the queen and royal family, the nobility and Established
Church, bracketing republicans with atheists, and both with unpunished
felons; as also classing immorality, the facts of physiology and the
details of disease in a group together, as things horrible and not to
be spoken of before ladies. She was not slow to believe evil of her
neighbors, maintaining, indeed, that to be spoken of at all was proof
sufficient of undesirable conduct; but she would never investigate a
ch