The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were
barbarous enough, not only to destroy the Roman cities, and
temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise;
and then retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to
live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of
the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a
right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but
throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin
priesthood, who, in some respects, were--to their honour--the
representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its
remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that
they looked on personal dirt--like the old hermits of the Thebaid-
-as a sign of sanctity; and discouraged--as they are said to do
still in some of the Romance countries of Europe--the use of the
bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent.

At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip
of the august shade, as he said to himself: "This, at least, I
did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my
empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not
look on dirt as a sign of sanctity?"

"On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our empire boast of
being the cleanliest--perhaps the only perfectly cleanly--people
in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas.
And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our
scientific men--than whom the world has never seen wiser--have
proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the
fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery, and