The patient reader is rewarded for wading through familiar machinations by a number of rollicking scenes. Mr. Harold Smith delivers a lecture on the South Sea islands to the humble citizens of Barchester in which he extols the virtues of Civilization--"'And to Christianity,' shouted Mrs. Proudie, to the great amazement of the assembled people and to the thorough wakening of the bishop." Framley Parsonage gives us our first look into the character of a singular personage who will later be the protagonist in _The Last Chronicle of Barset_: the Reverend Josiah Crawley. Mr. Crawley is the impoverished parson of the parish of Hogglestock, where he serves the Lord and the parish and attempts to feed his wife and four children on ninety pounds a year. His religion and his pride are unbending and immune to compromise. He is chosen by Lady Lufton to counsel her wayward parson Mark Robarts, and the scene in which he visits Mark in his study is one in which young Mark is chastened by a prophet of old. One does not envy Mark his position under the gaze of Mr. Crawley, whose "sunken gray eyes" make his victim quail under a repetition of the question: "I now make bold to ask you, Mr. Robarts, whether you are doing your best to lead such a life as may become a parish clergyman among his parishioners?" Besides the Serious Interview, such as the one above, Trollope revels in the Victorian party scene, two of which are presented as the _conversazione_ of Mrs. Proudie and the subsequent _conversazione_ of Miss Dunstable. On each occasion familiar characters are summoned to play cameo roles. Lord Dumbello is introduced as a suitor for the hand of the statuesque but silent beauty Griselda Grantly, and we are given full disclosure of the extent of the courtship. Griselda observes that it is "rather cold." Lord Dumbello replies with two words: "Deuced cold." That's it. They were subsequently married, and the reader may wonder whether their conversations ever became more substantial. Mrs. Proudie has a little tilt with Mrs. Grantly, and Miss Dunstable reappears as the good-natured fairy godmother from the previous novel, _Dr. Thorne_. But the meeting of meetings is that between Lady Lufton and the personification in her eyes of all that is evil and opposed to her interests in the county, the Duke of Omnium. Aware that the crowding in the room had led the Duke to being pressed close against her, she turns quickly but with maintenance of her dignity and removes her dress from the contact. Thus face to face, the Duke begs her pardon--the only words ever to pass between them in their lives. Retreating, she makes a low and slow curtsey.