t is addressed or the width of a mountain chasm
which a baronet can conveniently leap, but it is not a bad description
of the general idea and intention of aristocracy as they exist in human
affairs. The essential dream of aristocracy is magnificence and valour;
and if the Family Herald Supplement sometimes distorts or exaggerates
these things, at least, it does not fall short in them. It never errs
by making the mountain chasm too narrow or the title of the baronet
insufficiently impressive. But above this sane reliable old literature
of snobbishness there has arisen in our time another kind of literature
of snobbishness which, with its much higher pretensions, seems to me
worthy of very much less respect. Incidentally (if that matters), it
is much better literature. But it is immeasurably worse philosophy,
immeasurably worse ethics and politics, immeasurably worse vital
rendering of aristocracy and humanity as they really are. From such
books as those of which I wish now to speak we can discover what a
clever man can do with the idea of aristocracy. But from the Family
Herald Supplement literature we can learn what the idea of aristocracy
can do with a man who is not clever. And when we know that we know
English history.

This new aristocratic fiction must have caught the attention of
everybody who has read the best fiction for the last fifteen years. It
is that genuine or alleged literature of the Smart Set which represents
that set as distinguished, not only by smart dresses, but by smart
sayings. To the bad baronet, to the good baronet, to the romantic and
misunderstood baronet who is supposed to be a bad baronet, but is a
good baronet, this school has added a conception undreamed of in the
former years--the conception of an amusing baronet. The aristocrat is
not merely to be taller than mortal men and stronger and handsomer, he
is also to be more witty. He is the long man with the short epigram.
Many eminent, and deservedly eminent, modern novelists must accept some
responsibility for having supported this worst form of snobbishness--an
intellectual snobbishness. The talented author of "Dodo" is
responsible for having in some sense created the fashion as a fashion.
Mr. Hichens, in the "Green Carnation," reaffirmed the strange idea that
young noblemen talk well; though his case had some vague biographical
foundation, and in consequence an excuse. Mrs. Craigie is considerably
guilty in the matter, although, or