Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/38

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26
ESSAYS IN MODERNITY

rhodomontade of so much of 'Sixty Years After.' Unhappily, the same phenomenon is to be noted in a dozen other cases. This hapless caricature of the 'man of science' has a perfect parallel in the equally hapless caricature of the Frenchman, or of the Dissenting Minister, or of any other person who lives outside the exiguous pale of Lord Tennyson's antiquated prejudices of caste and religion. The Church of England clergyman (as we have seen) is the embodiment of the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ: he is 'that good man.' The Dissenting Minister appears, and appears only, and again and again, as 'heated pulpiteer, not preaching simple Christ to simple men,' who does 'his oily best, dropping the too rough H in hell and heaven, to spread the Word by which himself has thriven.' And France? what has he to say of France—social, artistic, and literary? Socially, it is the home elect of 'blind hysterics,' of 'revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a schoolboy's barring-out'—in a word, of a 'red fool-fury.' Artistically, it is the producer of 'poisonous honey,' which somebody or other 'stole,' and malignantly attempted to use on the supreme painters of our English Royal Academy, but (it would still seem) without any very marked result. Of French literature it is needless to say any more than that it is all 'wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,'