e race sick with
envy. But he was born the son of an earl, and the coal-heaver
propensities had been trained and trimmed in patrician fashion. An earl
on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the
earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the
least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with
him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His
physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had
brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of
forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization
goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. And
he never walked about his property without a hammer and nails, so that
if he came to any fence broken or breaking down, he could mend it, as
was very right and proper; but when people hear of an earl, they connect
the title with something lofty in the way of employment, and it is
certain that the village joiner would have mended the fences better than
the earl. But no doubt it was an innocent amusement, and _noblesse_ did
not _oblige_ the earls of Birndale: every man of them had always done
what was right in his own eyes. Why, the brother whom this earl had
succeeded passed a good deal of his time knitting, but he was the only
one of his race that had taken to that peaceful, aged-woman-looking
employment: the rest had not knitted anything except their brows, and
all of them had been pretty good at that.

There had been statesmen of the race, and there had been blackguards,
and there had been some of them who combined both characters in their
own persons. This earl had been in Parliament, for a short time even in
the cabinet, and for several years he had been governor in one of the
colonies; and in each of these positions he had made a respectable
figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his
son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."
If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong
will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when
accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the
Tories--not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one
line of politics--and he held that most men need to be governed, and
that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was
an illustrious example.