Genre:

Novel, Serial

Subjects:

Anti-Scientism, Supernaturalism, Theology of Nature, Environmentalism, Politics

    Lord Boanerges attempts to teach Miss Dunstable to 'blow soap-bubbles on scientific principles', to which she responds that those who have 'never asked the reason why [....] have the best of it'. 'What pleasure', she remarks, 'can one have in a ghost after one has seen the phosphorus rubbed on?' (310), and then she sings an excerpt from an oratorio by Georg F Handel which states, 'Did I not own Jehovah's power / How vain were all I knew'. Boanerges, who does not know the oratorio but nevertheless gets the best of the argument over knowledge and spirituality, reasons that 'perhaps one might help the other'. (311) The ancient trees at Chaldicotes forest are not only to be cut down, but rooted up; 'a murderous shame', comments Frank Gresham, which only 'a whig government would do' (312).

Reprinted:

Trollope 1861