But we have fallen upon different days. The philosopher has been lured from his den; the poets have come down from Parnassus to sport with the nymphs of Philistia, the intellectual rogue elephant has been tamed to "caper nimbly in my lady's chamber," and the recusant and the pariah sat down to table with the imposing dignitaries of the Church and State. It may be well on the whole, but these gracious concessions from the Philistine are not without their perils for the philosopher and the artist. Even the wisest of them cannot always escape the moral and mental deterioration that comes of being _au fait_ in the whiffles and frothy small talk of drawing-rooms, the parlour tricks and pretty deportments; and the donning of a chimney-pot hat and a dress coat is often the first step on the downward career of the intellectual. Have we not seen it? One season will transform the modest, single-hearted, plain-living artist or student into a vain, insufferable, intellectual mountebank. A few months of interviewing, and "log-rolling," and posturing in Mayfair, and you change your ideas, stultify your conscience, and degenerate into a Respectable. It is almost inevitable. We are all sweetly human, and vanity is one of our prime characteristics. Most of us, also, as some critic of life observes, would rather be "the chief of a committee of four than the unknown benefactor of our species." An author of mediocre ability, possessing that quality of self-assertiveness known commonly as "side," can far outpace the shy genius in the race for public esteem. The brazen bumptiousness and supercilious disdain of the mere talent which lacks astute worldly wisdom are the components of the snobbishness that makes for social success. Society closes the door upon the needy philosopher in his threadbare garb; but it throws its portals wide to welcome the adept of claptrap, whose higher philosophy is the study of the main chance. I do not applaud the intellectual exclusiveness with which some of the cultured attempt to keep their immaculate souls unspotted from the world. We want no Respectability of pedants and book-worms. Erudition is worthy of the highest respect; but the erudite snob is imperfectly cultivated. He is frequently more ignorant of many important phases of life than the sheer illiterates whom he pities for a narrowness of judgment upon men. Who can gainsay Sir Thomas Browne, when he writes: "It is an unjust way of compute to magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities; and to under-value a solid judgment because he knows not the genealogy of Hector"? It is difficult to dissociate arrogance from ignorance, even when we know that the arrogant man is learned. Snobbishness is a mark of shallowness.