rather because, she has combined the
aristocratic note with a note of some moral and even religious
sincerity. When you are saving a man's soul, even in a novel, it is
indecent to mention that he is a gentleman. Nor can blame in this
matter be altogether removed from a man of much greater ability, and a
man who has proved his possession of the highest of human instinct, the
romantic instinct--I mean Mr. Anthony Hope. In a galloping, impossible
melodrama like "The Prisoner of Zenda," the blood of kings fanned an
excellent fantastic thread or theme. But the blood of kings is not a
thing that can be taken seriously. And when, for example, Mr. Hope
devotes so much serious and sympathetic study to the man called
Tristram of Blent, a man who throughout burning boyhood thought of
nothing but a silly old estate, we feel even in Mr. Hope the hint of
this excessive concern about the oligarchic idea. It is hard for any
ordinary person to feel so much interest in a young man whose whole aim
is to own the house of Blent at the time when every other young man is
owning the stars.

Mr. Hope, however, is a very mild case, and in him there is not only an
element of romance, but also a fine element of irony which warns us
against taking all this elegance too seriously. Above all, he shows his
sense in not making his noblemen so incredibly equipped with impromptu
repartee. This habit of insisting on the wit of the wealthier classes
is the last and most servile of all the servilities. It is, as I have
said, immeasurably more contemptible than the snobbishness of the
novelette which describes the nobleman as smiling like an Apollo or
riding a mad elephant. These may be exaggerations of beauty and
courage, but beauty and courage are the unconscious ideals of
aristocrats, even of stupid aristocrats.

The nobleman of the novelette may not be sketched with any very close
or conscientious attention to the daily habits of noblemen. But he is
something more important than a reality; he is a practical ideal. The
gentleman of fiction may not copy the gentleman of real life; but the
gentleman of real life is copying the gentleman of fiction. He may not
be particularly good-looking, but he would rather be good-looking than
anything else; he may not have ridden on a mad elephant, but he rides a
pony as far as possible with an air as if he had. And, upon the whole,
the upper class not only especially desire these qualities of beauty
and courage,