not having
perceived that the best men who come up from age to age are always
migrating from that pole which you say you prefer, to the antipodean
pole to which you are tending yourself. I can understand your feeling
of contempt for an idle lordling, but you should remember that lords
have been made lords in nine cases out of ten for good work done by
them for the benefit of their country."

"Why should the children of lords be such to the tenth and twentieth
generation?"

"Come into parliament, Mr. Thwaite, and if you have views on that
subject opposed to hereditary peerages, express them there. It is a
fair subject for argument. At present, I think that the sense of the
country is in favour of an aristocracy of birth. But be that as it
may, do not allow yourself to despise that condition of society which
it is the ambition of all men to enter."

"It is not my ambition."

"Pardon me. When you were a workman among workmen, did you not wish
to be their leader? When you were foremost among them, did you not
wish to be their master? If you were a master tradesman, would you
not wish to lead and guide your brother tradesmen? Would you not
desire wealth in order that you might be assisted by it in your views
of ambition? If you were an alderman in your borough, would you
not wish to be the mayor? If mayor, would you not wish to be its
representative in Parliament? If in Parliament, would you not wish
to be heard there? Would you not then clothe yourself as those among
whom you lived, eat as they ate, drink as they drank, keep their
hours, fall into their habits, and be one of them? The theory of
equality is very grand."

"The grandest thing in the world, Sir William."

"It is one to which all legislative and all human efforts should
and must tend. All that is said and all that is done among people
that have emancipated themselves from the thraldom of individual
aggrandizement, serve to diminish in some degree the distance between
the high and the low. But could you establish absolute equality in
England to-morrow, as it was to have been established in France some
half century ago, the inequality of men's minds and character would
re-establish an aristocracy within twenty years. The energetic, the
talented, the honest, and the unselfish will always be moving towards
an aristocratic side of society, because their virtues will beget
esteem, and esteem will beget wealth,--and wealth gives power for
good offices."

"A