Abbey. They have been hankering after it ever since the days of Cardinal Wiseman, and now at last they have done something to deserve the reward.’
‘I suppose,’ said Mr Bristley, ‘it will be a race between non-established Rome and dis-established Anglicanism, as they call it, for all the fine cathedrals of the kingdom. It would be a sin to let them go to ruin; somebody must have them. Madonna and Mylitta—which of the two forms of woman-worship will get the best of it in this country?’
‘If one may forecast the future,’ replied his niece, ‘I should say that Mylittism will be very soon merged in Catholicism as a special congregation. Depend upon it, Rome will not have rivals, if by latitudinarianism she can avoid it.’
‘Latitudinarianism is a fine word, and may be made to mean a good deal,’ said Mr Bristley, laughing.
‘Let it mean all it can,’ said Lesbia; ‘the leap has been taken. Moreover, are we not told that no man having put his hand to the plough and looking back—’
‘Is fit for the kingdom of Mylitta,’ put in the vicar. ‘But seriously, Lesbie, it does seem at last as if the horizon were clearing all round. The great convulsion has not wrought the misery we all feared it would. Enormous changes have come about, but the classes concerned are adapting themselves to the new conditions, and are not harassed by those who agitated for those conditions. An element of what might almost be called conservatism is tempering the zeal of revolutionaries; we may soon look to see all the wounds which are still open bound up, all the sores healed. The great battle upon which it all hinged is already ancient history, it has left no international rancour; the constitutional landmarks which had been overthrown are being silently replaced by new ones not wholly unlike them, only better. Much that excited mere blind animosity
