in his worldly mode of action and thought. But Parson John did not
perceive this, for Welby listened to that gentleman's eulogies on the
Ideal school without troubling himself to contradict them. He had
grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a
critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished
cruelty of sarcasm.

He came off with flying colours through an examination into his Church
orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir Peter. Amid a cloud of
ecclesiastical erudition, his own opinions vanished in those of the
Fathers. In truth, he was a Realist, in religion as in everything
else. He regarded Christianity as a type of existent civilization,
which ought to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types
of that civilization; such as the liberty of the press, the
representative system, white neckcloths and black coats of an evening,
etc. He belonged, therefore, to what he himself called the school of
Eclectical Christiology; and accommodated the reasonings of Deism to
the doctrines of the Church, if not as a creed, at least as an
institution. Finally, he united all the Chillingly votes in his
favour; and when he departed from the Hall carried off Kenelm for his
initiation into the new ideas that were to govern his generation.



CHAPTER XI.

KENELM remained a year and a half with this distinguished preceptor.
During that time he learned much in book-lore; he saw much, too, of
the eminent men of the day, in literature, the law, and the senate.
He saw, also, a good deal of the fashionable world. Fine ladies, who