Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/238

 "The height of the ambition of the less exalted ranks is to be noble, because they conceive to be noble, implies to be superior; associating in their minds, as they always do, a pre-eminence over their equals.—But, to be noble, among nobles, where is the pre-eminence?"

"Where indeed?" said Mrs, Million; and she thought of herself, sitting the most considered personage in this grand castle, and yet with sufficiently base blood flowing in her veins.

"And thus, in the highest circles," continued Vivian, "a man is of course not valued because he is a Marquess, or a Duke; but because he is a great warrior, or a great statesman, or very fashionable, or very witty. In all classes but the highest, a peer, however unbefriended by nature or by fortune, becomes a man of a certain rate of consequence, but to be a person of consequence in the highest class, requires something else, except high blood."

"I quite agree with you in your sentiments,