ABSTRACT
In a scene near the end of Barchester Towers (1857), as Francis Arabin struggles to declare his feelings for Eleanor Bold, the tongue-tied pair discusses Ullathorne, the Thorne family’s antiquated home. When Eleanor says that “old-fashioned things are so much the honestest,” Arabin demurs: “It is strange,” he says, “how widely the world is divided on a subject which is . . . so close beneath our eyes. Some think that we are quickly progressing towards perfection, while others imagine that virtue is disappearing from the earth.” When Eleanor asks him what he believes, he replies, “I hardly know whether . . . [we] lean more confidently than our fathers did on those high hopes to which we profess to aspire” (ch. 48).
