He was now quite in his element and had got into the proper way of punching the table with his fists. A few words dropping from Mr. Sowerby did now and again find their way to his ears, but the sound of his own voice had brought with it the accustomed charm, and he ran on from platitude to truism, and from truism back to platitude, with an eloquence that was charming to himself. “Civilization,” he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes and hands to the ceiling. “Oh, civilization—” “There will not be a chance for us now for the next hour and a half,” said Mr. Supplehouse, groaning. Harold Smith cast one eye down at him, but it immediately flew back to the ceiling. “Oh, civilization! thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?” Here Mrs. Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which no doubt would have been shared by the bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr. Smith continued unobservant; or, at any rate, regardless. “What is like unto thee? Thou art the irrigating stream which makest fertile the barren plain. Till thou comest all is dark and dreary; but at thy advent the noontide sun shines out, the earth gives forth her increase; the deep bowels of the rocks render up their tribute. Forms which were dull and hideous become endowed with grace and beauty, and vegetable existence rises to the scale of celestial life. Then, too, Genius appears clad in a panoply of translucent armour, grasping in his hand the whole terrestrial surface, and making every rood of earth subservient to his purposes;—Genius, the child of civilization, the mother of the Arts!” The last little bit, taken from the Pedigree of Progress, had a great success, and all Barchester went to work with its hands and feet;—all Barchester, except that ill-natured aristocratic front-row together with the three arm-chairs at the corner of it. The aristocratic front-row felt itself to be too intimate with civilization to care much about it; and the three arm-chairs, or rather that special one which contained Mrs. Proudie, considered that there was a certain heathenness, a pagan sentimentality almost amounting to infidelity, contained in the lecturer’s remarks, with which she, a pillar of the Church, could not put up, seated as she was now in public conclave. “It is to civilization that we must look,” continued Mr. Harold Smith, descending from poetry to prose as a lecturer well knows how, and thereby showing the value of both—“for any material progress in these islands; and—” “And to Christianity,” shouted Mrs. Proudie, to the great amazement of the assembled people and to the thorough wakening of the bishop, who, jumping up in his chair at the sound of the well-known voice, exclaimed, “Certainly, certainly.”