will bear him up like the rayed plumes of the angels.  But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of their nature sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or levitation.  Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity.  One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness.  A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky.  Seriousness is not a virtue.  It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice.  It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do.  It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.  For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap.  It is easy to be heavy:  hard to be light.  Satan fell by the force of gravity.

Now, it is the peculiar honour of Europe since it has been Christian that while it has had aristocracy it has always at the back of its heart treated aristocracy as a weakness—­generally as a weakness that must be allowed for.  If any one wishes to appreciate this point, let him go outside Christianity into some other philosophical atmosphere.  Let him, for instance, compare the classes of Europe with the castes of India.  There aristocracy is far more awful, because it is far more intellectual.  It is seriously felt that the scale of classes is a scale of spiritual values; that the baker is better than the butcher in an invisible and sacred sense.  But no Christianity, not even the most ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a baronet was better than a butcher in that sacred sense.  No Christianity, however ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would not be damned.  In pagan society there may have been (I do not know) some such serious division between the free man and the slave.  But in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman a sort of joke, though I admit that in some great crusades and councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke.  But we in Europe never really and at the root of our souls took aristocracy seriously.  It is only an occasional non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even manage for a moment to take aristocracy seriously.  It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects.  It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these.  The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.