of his own sex, there is apt to be something too much of the
magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and
self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See,
they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life
without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation
is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted
lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other
men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of
life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, they
feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, as if they
were so many Joan-of-Arc's; but this does not come out in
their behaviour; and they treat them to Grandisonian airs
marked with a suspicion of fatuity. I am not quite certain
that women do not like this sort of thing; but really, after
having bemused myself over DANIEL DERONDA, I have given up
trying to understand what they like.

If it did nothing else, this sublime and ridiculous
superstition, that the pleasure of the pair is somehow blessed
to others, and everybody is made happier in their happiness,
would serve at least to keep love generous and great-hearted.
Nor is it quite a baseless superstition after all. Other
lovers are hugely interested. They strike the nicest balance
between pity and approval, when they see people aping the
greatness of their own sentiments. It is an understood thing
in the play, that while the young gentlefolk are courting on
the terrace, a rough flirtation is being carried on, and a
light, trivial sort of love is growing up, between the footman
and the singing chambermaid. As people are generally cast for
the leading parts in their own imaginations, the reader can