“Where kings lead, it is to be supposed they are wanted.  Service is the noble office on earth, and where kings do service let them take the first honours of the State:  but”—­hark at this—­“the English middle-class, which has absorbed the upper, and despises, when it is not quaking before it, the lower, will have nothing above it but a ricketty ornament like that you see on a confectioner’s twelfth-cake."’

‘The man deserves hanging!’ said Colonel Halkett.

’Further, my dear colonel, and Nevil marks it pretty much throughout:  “This loyalty smacks of a terrible perfidy.  Pass the lords and squires; they are old trees, old foundations, or joined to them, whether old or new; they naturally apprehend dislocation when a wind blows, a river rises, or a man speaks;—­that comes of age or aping age:  their hearts are in their holdings!  For the loyalty of the rest of the land, it is the shopkeeper’s loyalty, which is to be computed by the exact annual sum of his net profits.  It is now at high tide.  It will last with the prosperity of our commerce.”—­The insolent old vagabond!—­“Let commercial disasters come on us, and what of the loyalty now paying its hundreds of thousands, and howling down questioners!  In a day of bankruptcies, how much would you bid for the loyalty of a class shivering under deprivation of luxuries, with its God Comfort beggared?  Ay, my Beauchamp,”—­the most offensive thing to me is that “my Beauchamp,” but old Nevil has evidently given himself up hand and foot to this ruffian—­“ay, when you reflect that fear of the so-called rabble, i.e. the people, the unmoneyed class, which knows not Comfort, tastes not of luxuries, is the main component of their noisy frigid loyalty, and that the people are not with them but against, and yet that the people might be won by visible forthright kingly service to a loyalty outdoing theirs as the sun the moon; ay, that the people verily thirst to love and reverence; and that their love is the only love worth having, because it is disinterested love, and endures, and takes heat in adversity,—­reflect on it and wonder at the inversion of things!  So with a Church.  It lives if it is at home with the poor.  In the arms of enriched shopkeepers it rots, goes to decay in vestments—­vestments! flakes of mummy-wraps for it! or else they use it for one of their political truncheons—­to awe the ignorant masses:  I quote them.  So.  Not much ahead of ancient Egyptians in spirituality or in priestcraft!  They call it statesmanship.  O for a word for it!  Let Palsy and Cunning go to form a word.  Deadmanship, I call it.”—­To quote my uncle the baron, this is lunatic dribble!—­“Parsons and princes are happy with the homage of this huge passive fleshpot class.  It is enough for them.  Why not?  The taxes are paid and the tithes.  Whilst commercial prosperity lasts!"’

Colonel Halkett threw his arms aloft.