. . .Their ethical guides were the lesser lights of the sectaries, the pastors and deacons of Zoar and Bethesda, teachers often, akin in intelligence to Mr. Ruskin's "little squeaking idiot," telling "an audience of seventeen old women and three louts that they were the only children of God in Turin." All their "culture" came from such inspired sources. They were afraid of God, but, as a minor poet says, more afraid of Mrs Grundy. Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Robinson were their models; the Brownian view of life was good enough for them. Was not Mr. Brown very respectable? Did not Mrs. Smith set the example in ton, in Little Muddleton Road? Was not Mrs. Robinson distantly related to a branch of the aristocracy? They lived like human sheep. If one of the flock jumped automatically, the others began to jump; and one moral or social baa set all the rest bleating in the same respectable mechanical strain. Rarely a boy or a girl in the community began to develop healthy . . . Read More