efendant in
the Court of Arches, is not Mr. Mackonochie, but the parson's wife.

Mrs. Proudie, we repeat, is the Church of England; but if it is
difficult to estimate the results of her position upon the spouse of her
bosom and the parish which she rules, it is still harder to estimate its
results upon herself. Her outer manner seems, indeed, to reflect what we
have ventured to call the gray tones of her life, and a certain
weariness of routine breaks out even in the mechanical precision of her
existence. Power, in the parochial as in the domestic circle, is bought
by her at the cost of a perpetual self-abnegation, and it is a little
hard to be always hiding the hand that pulls the strings. We may excuse
a little forgetfulness in a wife when her daily sacrifice is wholly
forgotten in the silver teapot and the emblazoned memorial which
proclaim the borrowed glories of her spouse.

Sometimes there may be a little justification for the complaint of the
British priestess that the priest alone should be crowned with laurel.
But, if she is ecclesiastically forgotten, it must be remembered that
her position receives a shy and timid recognition from society. She is
credited with a quasi-clerical character, and regarded as having
received a sort of semi-ordination. The Church, indeed, assigns her no
parochial precedence; but public opinion, if it sets her beneath her
husband, places her above all other ecclesiastical agencies. Tacitly she
is allowed to have the right to speak of "_our_ curates." Then, again,
society assigns her a sort of mediatorial position between the Church
and the world; she is the point of transition between the clergy and
their flocks. It is through her that the incense of congregational
flattery is suffered to mount up to the idol who may not personally
inhale it; and it is through her that the parson can intimate his
opinion, and scatter his hints on a number of social subjects too
trivial for his personal intervention.

It is impossible, indeed, to express in words the delicate shades of her
social position, or, what is yet more remarkable, the relation to her
sister-world of woman. There can be no doubt that, taken all in all,
women are a little proud of the parson's wife. She is, as it were, the
tithe of their sex, taken and consecrated for the rest. The dignity of
her position in close proximity to the very priesthood itself extends,
by the subtle gradation of sisters of mercy, district-visitors, a