“From one thing to another,” said Tom, “they got to cathedrals, and one
of them called St. Paul’s ‘a disgrace to a Christian city.’ I couldn’t
stand that, you know. I was always bred to respect St. Paul’s; weren’t
you?”
“My education in that line was neglected,” said Hardy, gravely. “And so
you took up the cudgels for St. Paul’s?”
“Yes, I plumped out that St. Paul’s was the finest cathedral in
England. You’d have thought I had said that lying was one of the
cardinal virtues—one or two just treated me to a sort of pitying sneer,
but my neighbors were down upon me with a vengeance. I stuck to my
text though, and they drove me into saying I liked the Ratcliffe more
than any building in Oxford; which I don’t believe I do, now I come
to think of it. So when they couldn’t get me to budge for their talk,
they took to telling me that everybody who knew anything about church
architecture was against me—of course meaning that I knew nothing about
it—for the matter of that, I don’t mean to say that I do.” Tom paused;
it had suddenly occurred to him that there might be some reason in the
rough handling he had got.
“But what did you say to the authorities?” said Hardy, who was greatly
amused.
“Said I didn’t care a straw for them,” said Tom; “there was no right
or wrong in the matter, and I had as good a right to my opinion as
Pugin—or whatever his name is—and the rest.”
“What heresy!” said Hardy, laughing; “you caught it for that, I
suppose?”
“Didn’t I! They made such a noise over it, that the men at the other
end of the table stopped talking (they were all freshmen at our end),
and when they found what was up, one of the older ones took me in
hand, and I got a lecture about the middle ages, and the monks. I
said I thought England was well rid of the monks; and then we got on
to Protestantism, and fasting, and apostolic succession, and passive
obedience, and I don’t know what all! I only know I was tired enough of
it before coffee came; but I couldn’t go, you know, with all of them on
me at once, could I?”
“Of course not; you were like the six thousand unconquerable British
infantry at Albuera. You held your position by sheer fighting,
suffering fearful loss.”
“Well,” said Tom, laughing, for he had talked himself into good humor
again. “I dare say I talked a deal of nonsense; and, when I come to
think it over, a good deal of what some of them said had something
in it. I should like to hear it again quietly; but there were others
sneering and giving themselves airs, and that puts a fellow’s back up.”
“Yes,” said Hardy, “a good many of the weakest and vainest men who come
up take to this sort of thing now. They can do nothing themselves, and
get a sort of platform by going in for the High Church business from
which to look down on their neighbors.”
“That’s just what I thought,” said Tom; “they tried to push mother
Church, mother Church, down my throat at every turn. I’m as fond of the
Church as any of them, but I don’t want to be jumping up on her back
every minute, like a sickly chicken getting on the old hen’s back to
warm its feet whenever the ground is cold, and fancying himself taller
than all the rest of the brood.”