The present
writer has had little opportunity of conversing with men of great rank
and power; yet he has conversed with certain men of the very greatest:
and he can say sincerely that he has found head-stewards to be much
more dignified men than dukes; and parsons of no earthly reputation,
and of very limited means, to be infinitely more stuck-up than
archbishops. And though at first the airs of stuck-up small men are
amazingly ridiculous, and so rather amusing, they speedily become so
irritating that the men who exhibit them cannot be classed otherwise
than with the disagreeable of the earth.
Few people are more disagreeable than the man who, while you are
conversing with him, is (you know) taking a mental estimate of you,
more particularly of the soundness of your doctrinal views,--with the
intention of showing you up, if you be wrong, and of inventing or
misrepresenting something to your prejudice, if you be right. Whenever
you find any man trying (in a moral sense) to trot you out, and
examine your paces, and pronounce upon your general soundness, there
are two courses you may follow. The one is, severely to shut him up,
and sternly make him understand that you don't choose to be inspected
by him.
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