aristocracy. The immortal pages of Saint Simon are there to show it.
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," says the
Gospel. Now the "treasure" among The Souls was, ultimately--or at least
tended to be--something spiritual. The typical expression of it, at its
best, is to be found in those exquisite last words left by Laura
Lyttelton for her husband, which the second Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton has,
as I think, so rightly published. That unique "will," which for thirty
years before it appeared in print was known to a wide circle of persons,
many of whom had never seen the living Laura, was the supreme expression
of a quality which, in greater or lesser degree, The Souls seemed to
demand of one another, and of those who wished to join their band. Yet,
combined with this passion, this poetry, this religious feeling, was
first the maddest delight in simple things--in open air and physical
exercise; then, a headlong joy in literature, art, music, acting; a
perpetual spring of fun; and a hatred of all the solemn pretenses that
too often make English society a weariness.

No doubt there is something--perhaps much--to be said on the other side.
But I do not intend to say it. I was never a Soul, nor could have been.
I came from too different a world. But there were a certain number of
persons--of whom I was one--who were their "harborers" and spectators. I
found delight in watching them. They were quite a new experience to me;
and I saw them dramatically, like a scene in a play, full of fresh
implications and suggestions. I find in an old letter to my mother an
account of an evening at 40 Grosvenor Square, where the Tennants lived.

It was not an evening party--we joined a dinner party there, after
dining somewhere else. So that the rooms were empty enough to let
one see the pretty creatures gathered in it, to perfection. In the
large drawing-room, which is really a ball-room with a polished