In a new world, beyond the ocean, there grew up a new race, a scion of England, which shaped its life without regard to the principle of hereditary lordship; and in course of time this triumphant Republic began to shake the ideals of the Motherland.  Its civilization, spite of superficial resemblances, is not English; let him who will think it superior; all one cares to say is that it has already shown in a broad picture the natural tendencies of English blood when emancipated from the old cult.  Easy to understand that some there are who see nothing but evil in the influence of that vast commonwealth.  If it has done us good, assuredly the fact is not yet demonstrable.  In old England, democracy is a thing so alien to our traditions and rooted sentiment that the line of its progress seems hitherto a mere track of ruin.  In the very word is something from which we shrink; it seems to signify nothing less than a national apostasy, a denial of the faith in which we won our glory.  The democratic Englishman is, by the laws of his own nature, in parlous case; he has lost the ideal by which he guided his rude, prodigal, domineering instincts; in place of the Right Honourable, born to noble things, he has set up the mere Plebs, born, more likely than not, for all manner of baseness.  And, amid all his show of loud self-confidence, the man is haunted with misgiving.

The task before us is no light one.  Can we, whilst losing the class, retain the idea it embodied?  Can we English, ever so subject to the material, liberate ourselves from that old association, yet guard its meaning in the sphere of spiritual life?  Can we, with eyes which have ceased to look reverently on worn-out symbols, learn to select from among the grey-coated multitude, and place in reverence even higher him who “holds his patent of nobility straight from Almighty God”?  Upon that depends the future of England.  In days gone by, our very Snob bore testimony after his fashion to our scorn of meanness; he at all events imagined himself to be imitating those who were incapable of a sordid transaction, of a plebeian compliance.  But the Snob, one notes, is in the way of degeneracy; he has new exemplars; he speaks a ruder language.  Him, be sure, in one form or another, we shall have always with us, and to observe his habits is to note the tenor of the time.  If he have at the back of his dim mind no living ideal which lends his foolishness a generous significance, then indeed—­videant consules.

XXIII.

A visit from N-.  He stayed with me two days, and I wish he could have stayed a third. (Beyond the third day, I am not sure that any man would be wholly welcome.  My strength will bear but a certain amount of conversation, even the pleasantest, and before long I desire solitude, which is rest.)