neighbourhood
of the palace."

"I suppose I had better see Quiverful?" said the chaplain.

"I suppose you had," said the bishop.

CHAPTER XIII

The Rubbish Cart

Mr. Harding was not a happy man as he walked down the palace pathway
and stepped out into the close. His preferment and pleasant house
were a second time gone from him, but that he could endure. He had
been schooled and insulted by a man young enough to be his son, but
that he could put up with. He could even draw from the very injuries
which had been inflicted on him some of that consolation which we
may believe martyrs always receive from the injustice of their own
sufferings, and which is generally proportioned in its strength
to the extent of cruelty with which martyrs are treated. He had
admitted to his daughter that he wanted the comfort of his old home,
and yet he could have returned to his lodgings in the High Street, if
not with exaltation, at least with satisfaction, had that been all.
But the venom of the chaplain's harangue had worked into his blood,
and sapped the life of his sweet contentment.

"New men are carrying out new measures and are carting away the
useless rubbish of past centuries!" What cruel words these had been;
and how often are they now used with all the heartless cruelty of a
Slope! A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that
either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school
established within the last score of years. He may then regard
himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing
now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an
era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very
desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We
must laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be ever
so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless
we must laugh--or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, and
live up to the spirit of the times, and write up to it too, if
that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are nought. New men and new
measures, long credit and few scruples, great success or wonderful
ruin, such are now the tastes of Englishmen who know how to live.
Alas, alas! Under such circumstances Mr. Harding could not but
feel that he was an Englishman who did not know how to live. This
new doctrine of Mr. Slope and the rubbish cart, new at least at
Barchester, sadly disturbed his equ