A title does not now even serve as a distinction:  it does not distinguish.  A coronet is not merely an extinguisher:  it is a hiding-place.

But the really odd thing is this.  This false quality in titles does not merely apply to the new and vulgar titles, but to the old and historic titles also.  For hundreds of years titles in England have been essentially unmeaning; void of that very weak and very human instinct in which titles originated.  In essential nonsense of application there is nothing to choose between Northcliffe and Norfolk.  The Duke of Norfolk means (as my exquisite and laborious knowledge of Latin informs me) the Leader of Norfolk.  It is idle to talk against representative government or for it.  All government is representative government until it begins to decay.  Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to govern.  All aristocrats were first meant as envoys of democracy; and most envoys of democracy lose no time in becoming aristocrats.  By the old essential human notion, the Duke of Norfolk ought simply to be the first or most manifest of Norfolk men.

I see growing and filling out before me the image of an actual Duke of Norfolk.  For instance, Norfolk men all make their voices run up very high at the end of a sentence.  The Duke of Norfolk’s voice, therefore, ought to end in a perfect shriek.  They often (I am told) end sentences with the word “together”; entirely irrespective of its meaning.  Thus I shall expect the Duke of Norfolk to say:  “I beg to second the motion together”; or “This is a great constitutional question together.”  I shall expect him to know much about the Broads and the sluggish rivers above them; to know about the shooting of water-fowl, and not to know too much about anything else.  Of mountains he must be wildly and ludicrously ignorant.  He must have the freshness of Norfolk; nay, even the flatness of Norfolk.  He must remind me of the watery expanses, the great square church towers and the long level sunsets of East England.  If he does not do this, I decline to know him.

I need not multiply such cases; the principle applies everywhere.  Thus I lose all interest in the Duke of Devonshire unless he can assure me that his soul is filled with that strange warm Puritanism, Puritanism shot with romance, which colours the West Country.  He must eat nothing but clotted cream, drink nothing but cider, reading nothing but ‘Lorna Doone’, and be unacquainted with any town larger than Plymouth, which he must regard with some awe, as the Central Babylon of the world.  Again, I should expect the Prince of Wales always to be full of the mysticism and dreamy ardour of the Celtic fringe.