What Disraeli detested was what he termed, even in _Vivian Grey_, “_society on anti-social principles_.” What he liked was a distinct and distinctive circle, interchanging its ideas--“free trade in conversation.” In his social, as in his political outlook, he craved inclusiveness on the basis of excellence, and not either the restrictedness of a caste or the miscellany of a multitude. In this sense all society should be “aristocratic.” And he always felt that, as a rule, it was precisely the middle-class element, contrasted either with those who inherited the finer perceptions of breeding or with those--the gallery--born with perceptive instincts--that is in the main deficient in these respects. “... The stockbrokers’ ladies took off the quarto travels and the hot-pressed poetry. They were the patronesses of your patent ink and your wire-wove paper. That is all past....”[155] What he disrelished was the meaner sort of mediocrity, except when it was unassuming and useful. “High breeding and a good heart,” he demands in _Lothair_ for the “perfect host.” “To throw over a host,” he has also written, “is the most heinous of social crimes. It ought never to be pardoned....” “... She, too,” he says of the Duchess in _Coningsby_--who “was one of the delights of existence,”--“was distinguished by that perfect good breeding which is the result of nature and not of education; for it may be found in a cottage and may be missed in a palace. ’Tis a genial regard for the feelings of others that springs from the absence of selfishness.... Nothing in the world could have induced her to appear bored when another was addressing or attempting to amuse her. She was not one of those vulgar fine ladies who meet you one day with a vacant stare, as if unconscious of your existence, and address you on another in a tone of impertinent familiarity.” “This is a lesson for you fine ladies,” says “Egremont” in _Sybil_, “who think you can govern the world by what you call your social influences; asking people once or twice a year to an inconvenient crowd in your house; now haughtily smirking, and now impertinently staring at them, and flattering yourselves all this time that to have the occasional privilege of entering your saloons, and the periodical experience of your insolent recognition, is to be a reward for great exertions, or, if necessary, an inducement to infamous tergiversation.” And, indeed, the “Zenobia” of _Endymion_, who was Lady Jersey, did sometimes condescend to practise these shifts of political ambition.[156] But in high society with low standards, there were worse depths than the backstairs patronage of party recruits. “Never,” as the fine sentence prefixed to _Sybil_ recalls, “were so many gentlemen, and so little gentleness.” The contemptuous materialism of “Monmouth House,” the elegant indifference of “Lord Eskdale,” around which revolve the satellites and parasites, social and political--the folks that made