The want of purity and elevation in the present English ideal of aristocracy is evident from the undeniable fact that title is now little more than a supreme sanction given to the popular adoration of wealth. From the idea that it is inconvenient for a peer of England to be poor, a further advance has been made to the idea that a very rich man has a sort of claim to a title; and when peerages are bestowed on obscure men as a reward for having enriched themselves, the proceeding is thought so natural as to excite no comment, except, perhaps, from Mr. Labouchere. When, on the other hand, a distinguished man, not exceptionally rich, is made the recipient of a peerage, his promotion is a surprise to the public, unless it can be explained as a reward for political services to the party that happens to be in power. The Tennyson peerage is a curious example of this. Some friends of the Poet Laureate thought it rather a degradation for a man of genius to accept the prize of a lower ambition than that which they had believed to be his, whilst his enemies made quotations from _Maud_, applicable to new titles and new mansions. If Tennyson had been a successful brewer or banker, nobody would have made a remark; his peerage would not have been considered either above him or below him, but simply the natural English consecration of new riches. [Sidenote: Victor Hugo’s Peerage.] Forty years before the elevation of Tennyson to the English peerage, his contemporary, Victor Hugo, was made a peer of France. It is probable that not a single Frenchman perceived anything incongruous in that promotion, or wondered whether the new peer had money enough to support his dignity. [Sidenote: Matthew Arnold on Aristocracy.] The reader may call to mind a few strong words of Matthew Arnold about the present condition of aristocracy in England: “Aristocracy now sets up in our country a false ideal, which materialises our upper class, vulgarises our middle class, brutalises our lower class. It misleads the young, makes the worldly more worldly, the limited more limited, the stationary more stationary.” These evils are due to the transformation of the English aristocracy into a plutocracy that is not, as in America, a plainly avowed plutocracy, but disguises itself in aristocratic costumes. [Sidenote: Distinction of a true Aristocracy.] [Sidenote: Money not the highest Object.] [Sidenote: The Army.] [Sidenote: The Church.] [Sidenote: Hostility to the Fine Arts.] [Sidenote: Commerce.]