His following was not a large one, but it was very distinguished. The
aristocracies of the earth gave to it; and not to understand and admire
Ralph Orth was deliberately to relegate one's self to the ranks. But the
elect are few, and they frequently subscribe to the circulating
libraries; on the Continent, they buy the Tauchnitz edition; and had
not Mr. Orth inherited a sufficiency of ancestral dollars to enable him
to keep rooms in Jermyn Street, and the wardrobe of an Englishman of
leisure, he might have been forced to consider the tastes of the
middle-class at a desk in Hampstead. But, as it mercifully was, the
fashionable and exclusive sets of London knew and sought him. He was too
wary to become a fad, and too sophisticated to grate or bore;
consequently, his popularity continued evenly from year to year, and
long since he had come to be regarded as one of them. He was not keenly
addicted to sport, but he could handle a gun, and all men respected his
dignity and breeding. They cared less for his books than women did,
perhaps because patience is not a characteristic of their sex. I am
alluding, however, in this instance, to men-of-the-world. A group of
young literary men--and one or two women--put him on a pedestal and
kissed the earth before it. Naturally, they imitated him, and as this
flattered him, and he had a kindly heart deep among the cere-cloths of
his formalities, he sooner or later wrote "appreciations" of them all,
which nobody living could understand, but which owing to the sub-title
and signature answered every purpose.

With all this, however, he was not utterly content. From the 12th of
August until late in the winter--when he did not go to Homburg and the
Riviera--he visited the best houses in England, slept in state chambers,
and meditated in historic parks; but the country was his one passion,
and he longed for his own acres.