he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that
any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or
ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness
which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely
absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to
convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"

Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,
and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every
inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is
the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place
protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because
they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"--an audience
of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of
Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had
wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift
suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the
courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of
human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords
during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his
morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and
exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That
such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so
frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and
the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying
circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike
opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and
that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are
not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.