hovering
superiority is annoying.

But it reaches a more dangerous importance when it affects spiritual
matters. The author interests himself, from his great height, in the
movements of his Victorian dwarfs, and notices that they are
particularly active, and prone to unusual oddity of movement, when they
are inspired by religious and moral passion. Their motions attract his
attention, and he describes them with gusto and often with wit. His
sketch of Rome before the Oecumenical Council is an admirably studied
page. Miss Nightingale's ferocity when the War Office phalanx closed its
ranks is depicted in the highest of spirits; it is impossible not to be
riveted by the scene round Cardinal Manning's death-bed; but what did
those manifestations mean? To Mr. Strachey it is evident that the fun of
the whole thing is that they meant nothing at all; they were only part
of the Victorian absurdity. It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as
a personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings
of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect.
The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity
to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is
solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When
the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of
England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration on the
anthill beneath him, "The questions at issue are being taken very
seriously by a large number of persons. How Early Victorian of them!"
Mr. Strachey has yet to learn that questions of this kind are "taken
seriously" by serious people, and that their emotion is both genuine and
deep. He sees nothing but alcoholic eccentricity in the mysticism of
Gordon. His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines of good
taste, as in the passage where he refers to the large and dirty ears of
the Roman cardinals. Still worse is the query as to what became of the
soul of Pope Pius IX. after his death.

These are errors in discretion. A fault in art is the want of care which
the author takes in delineating his minor or subordinate figures. He
gives remarkable pains, for example, to his study of General Gordon, but
he is indifferent to accuracy in his sketches of the persons who came
into contact, and often into collision, with Gordon. In this he
resembles those French painters, such as Bastien Lepage, who focus