In the same way, almost all of us have kinsfolk a little higher in the scale than ourselves, or whom we think so—it is all one. Now, it is quite amazing how accurate our genealogical knowledge becomes respecting one of these individuals, compared with its equally surprising ignorance regarding those who have not been so fortunate. When a cousin or half grand-uncle rises above our level, he rises into a blaze of light, which enables us to trace our connection with him as plainly as we run our eye along the string of a boy’s kite. But when a poor nephew or grand-nephew descends into poverty and contempt, he seems like a plummet submersed in the ocean, where, though we may occasionally feel him tugging at the bottom of the line, we are totally unable to trace the line itself. We are always most laudably ready to exchange the civilities of life and the affections of kindred with the cousin who has, in the first place, convinced us of his merit by thatching himself well over with bank-notes. It is pleasant to go and dine at a kinsman’s house, where we know that our entertainment can be furnished without any distress to our worthy host. But really it is a totally different case to intrude upon a scene where our poor friend is doing his best, with the tears in his eyes, to satisfy the cravings of his family with, perhaps, a very homely meal. Humanity in that case demands that we should rather stay away, for we know he does not like to be seen in his poor state. And then, too, how easily we can put up with the eccentricities of a wealthy relation, even though they may sometimes gall our pride a little: how strangely liable, on the other hand, are we to fall out with the poor unfortunates below us! On the day after having been regaled to the uttermost excess by our wealthy friend, we will quarrel with the poor one for having drunk a single glass of some plebeian fluid. With the former, nothing—with the latter, every thing, is a fault. The imperfections of the poor are yawning and palpable as their own rags: those of the rich are as smooth as broad-cloth can make them. The truth is, our senses can tolerate almost any odious or improper thing that is found in a scene above our usual grade in the world. We never know enough of it to be able to measure its real odiousness, or it is disguised by the cordial appliances which we always have ready for the sores of the great. But the vices, nay, the smallest foibles of the lowly, come before our senses so bare, so beggarly, so unanealed, and, moreover, they are so immediately followed by that additional wretchedness which wealthy error escapes, that we have no excuse for them. Hence we generally find, that we have shaken off the most of our poor relations on account of some trivial cause of offence, which we find it necessary, however, to be always nursing in our minds, in order to sustain us in the conviction that the breach of treaty—the _casus fœderis_—was sufficient.