It is not till a gigantic public evil begins to affect us personally that we become really in earnest for its redress. Alderman Dobbin had long marked the stealthy encroachment of ritual in the Church from afar with inward misgiving. But when the arising of a new vicar of the most lawless school brought the mischief to the door of the alderman’s own pew, when the audacious cleric presumed to burn frankincense or some such idolatrous drug under the alderman’s own nostrils, then, in his own words, he realized that we were on the verge of a revolution. It was fortunate indeed for the offender that the ordinary justice of the peace has no jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes. Alderman Dobbin did not brawl in the church--such a man could not brawl; but he wrote a letter to the paper, and he intimated to his vicar in the privacy of the vestry that he should reconsider his attitude towards disestablishment. To the culprit, standing on the great peaks of Catholic verity, clasping hands with sixty generations of apostles, fathers, saints, and bishops, his rebellious church-warden naturally mattered no more than a gnat buzzing round the altar. His spiritual predecessors had cast down emperors from their thrones, and given away largess of kingdoms. Was he to surrender the Œcumenical splendors of the Church at the bidding of an obscure suburban tradesman? If this impertinent boot-maker represented the feelings of the laity, so much the worse for the laity. The Church could get on without _them_, but not without its apostolic priesthood. Such disdain, to the worthy alderman, was at once an outrage and a revelation. It is possible that there are social circles in which even an alderman is not removed beyond the reach of rivalry; but in the meridian of Tooting, where Alderman Dobbin had passed his life, and where his high office, together with his equally high moral character, had hitherto secured him universal deference, he felt himself to be an important personage. After all, importance is a question of standpoint. Every one has some one to look up to him. Though you be but a youth of lowly birth, engaged in mercantile pursuits, with a stipend of no more than thirty weekly shillings, yet to the landlady who tolls you in a moiety of that sum you are a power whose favor is to be conciliated, and whose wrath is to be dreaded. To the drudge in the basement who blacks your boots and watches you through the area railings as you issue forth of a morning you are as a god moving on Olympus; the conductor who takes you to your work in his omnibus holds you for an undoubted member of the aristocracy; and the drunken artisan on the roof, earning his pound a day on every day that he can spare from the public-house, hates you for your pride and luxury.