And passing to the consideration of human beings who, though disagreeable, are good in the main, it may be laid down as a general principle, that any person, however good, is disagreeable from whom you feel it a relief to get away. We have all known people, thoroughly estimable, and whom you could not but respect, in whose presence it was impossible to feel at ease, and whose absence was felt as the withdrawal of a sense of constraint of the most oppressive kind. And this vague, uncomfortable influence, which breathes from some men, is produced in various ways. Sometimes it is the result of mere stiffness and awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing and importance are very small. It is quite wonderful what very great folk very little folk will sometimes fancy themselves to be. The present writer has had little opportunity of conversing with men of great rank and power; yet he has conversed with certain men of the very greatest: and he can say sincerely that he has found head-stewards to be much more dignified men than dukes; and parsons of no earthly reputation, and of very limited means, to be infinitely more stuck-up than archbishops. And though at first the airs of stuck-up small men are amazingly ridiculous, and so rather amusing, they speedily become so irritating that the men who exhibit them cannot be classed otherwise than with the disagreeable of the earth.