“Horror of death and a worse horror of life.  Few amongst men ever realise the truth of things, but there are rare occasions, moments of supernatural understanding or suffering (which are two words for one and the same thing), when we see life in all its worm-like meanness, and death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness.  Two days out of this year live like fire in my mind.  I went to my uncle Richard’s funeral.  There was cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went.  It lay swollen and featureless, and two busy hags lifted it up and packed it tight with wisps of hay, and mechanically uttered shrieks and moans.

“But, though the funeral was painfully obscene, it was not so obscene as the view of life I was treated to last week....

“Last week I was in London; I went to a place they call the ‘Colonies.’  Till then I had never realised the foulness of the human animal, but there even his foulness was overshadowed by his stupidity.  The masses, yes, I saw the masses, and I fed with them in their huge intellectual stye.  The air was filled with lines of the most inconceivable flags, lines upon lines of pale yellow, and there were glass cases filled with pickle bottles, and there were piles of ropes and a machine in motion, and in nooks there were some dreadful lay figures, and written underneath them, ‘Indian corn-seller,’ ‘Indian fish-seller.’  And there was the Prince of Wales on horseback, three times larger than life; and there were stuffed deer upon a rock, and a Polar bear, and the Marquis of Lome underneath.  In another room there were Indian houses, things in carved wood, and over each large placards announcing the popular dinner, the buffet, the table d’hote, at half-a-crown; and there were oceans of tea, and thousands of rolls of butter, and in the gardens the band played ‘Thine alone’ and ‘Mine again.’

“It seemed as if all the back-kitchens and staircases in England had that day been emptied out—­life-tattered housewives, girls grown stout on porter, pretty-faced babies, heavy-handed fathers, whistling boys in their sloppy clothes, and attitudes curiously evidencing an odious domesticity....

“In the Greek and Roman life there was an ideal, and there was a great ideal in the monastic life of the Middle Ages; but an ideal is wholly wanting in nineteenth century life.  I am not of these later days.  I am striving to come to terms with life.”

“And you think you can do that best by folding vestments and reviling humanity.  I do not see how you reconcile these opinions with the teaching of Christ—­with the life of Christ.”

“Oh, of course, if you are going to use those arguments against me, I have done; I can say no more.”

Mr Hare did not answer, and at the end of a long silence John said: 

“But, what do you say, supposing I show you over the college now, and when that’s done you will come up to my room and we’ll have a smoke before dinner?”