“And then people talk, too, as if we had got rid of idolatry!  We make a man a peer, we heap wealth upon him, and then we worship him for his magnificence, and are deeply affected if he talks civilly to us.  We don’t do it quite so much now, perhaps—­but in that man’s day, think what an aroma of rank and splendour is cast, even in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, over a dinner-party where a man like that was present!  If he paid Johnson the most trumpery of compliments, Johnson bowed low, and down it went on Boswell’s cuff!  Yet we go on perpetuating it.  We don’t require that such a man should be active, public-spirited, wise.  If he is fond of field-sports, fairly business-like, kindly, courteous, decently virtuous, we think him a great man, and feel mildly elated at meeting him and being spoken to civilly by him.  I don’t mean that only snobs feel that; but respectable people, who don’t pursue fashion, would be more pleased if an Earl they knew turned up and asked for a cup of tea than if the worthiest of their neighbours did so.  I don’t exaggerate the power of rank—­it doesn’t make a man necessarily powerful now, but a very little ability, backed up by rank, will go a long way.  A great general or a great statesman likes to be made an Earl; and yet a good many people would like an Earl of long descent quite as much.  There are a lot of people about who feel as Melbourne did when he said he liked the Garter so much because there was no d——­d merit about it.  I believe we admire people who inherit magnificence better than we admire people who earn it; and while that feeling is there, what can be done to alter it?”

“I don’t think I want to alter it,” I said; “it is very picturesque!”

“Yes, there’s the mischief,” said Father Payne, “it is more picturesque, hang it all!  The old aristocrat who feels like a prince and behaves like one, is more picturesque than the person who has sweated himself into it.  Think of the old Duke who was told he must retrench, and that he need not have six still-room maids in his establishment, and said, after a brief period of reflection, ’D——­n it, a man must have a biscuit!’ We like insolence!  That is to say, we like it in its place, because we admire power.  It’s ten times more impressive than the meekness of the saint.  The mischief is that we like anything from a man of power.  If he is insolent, we think it grand; if he is stupid, we think it a sort of condescension; if he is mild and polite, we think it marvellous; if he is boorish, we think it is simple-minded.  It is power that we admire, or rather success, and both can be inherited.  If a man gets a big position in England, he is always said to grow into it; but that is because we care about the position more than we care about the man.