{"id":"01KG8AM9K76693XNYFHTGC4735","cid":"bafkreiaztkt5gyzh4v7ypm5pg3irnhe5let5giutrgctejzdg6azisa5yi","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":11375,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 18","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":11312,"text":"the reason that any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is\r\nunsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.\r\n\r\nIn defence of their insistent employment of the title, a caprice hardly\r\ncompatible with their political principles, the Levellers of his\r\nacquaintance, candid in inconsistency, freely admit that somehow there\r\nis something in it felicitously befitting the character innately noble\r\nof de Grandvin.\r\n\r\nBut some fuller account of this genial paragon, upon whom are concentred\r\nthe otherwise diverging suffrages of the divers parties in Church and\r\nState--some account less restricted by considerations of space--is in\r\ncourse of preparation, and if clamorously demanded, may hereafter\r\nappear. For the present purpose it will be enough, perhaps, if an\r\noutlined picture or two serve to suggest the filled portrait.\r\n\r\nThough not so plentiful as our peaches in a good year, there are men of\r\nsuch noble quality that being in their company enriches and mellows one.\r\nThe wisdom they by contact give out is not celibate and sterile like\r\nSolomon’s, but wedded to enjoyment, and hence productive. They would\r\nseem to be a confirmation of the otherwise disputable maxim of Spinoza,\r\nthat every advance in joy implies an ascent in the scale of intelligence\r\nand capability. The influence of such a man insensibly disposes one to\r\ngentle charities, brave conceptions, heroic virtues. They have a\r\nsuggestion of the potentialities in the unvitiated Adam, a creature,\r\naccording to hallowed authority, originally created but a little lower\r\nthan the angels. Almost invariably these men have physical beauty; and\r\nthe moral charm is in keeping with that, apparently a spontaneous\r\nemanation from it. It is as golden wine down in a golden chalice, where,\r\nseen through the lustre suffusing the shadow, the delicious fluid looks\r\nto be the exuded gathered sap of the precious metal.\r\n\r\nIt was of the Marquis de Grandvin that the landscape painter, B. Hobbema\r\nBrown, an inoffensive sort of theoretical misanthrope, with a\r\ntreacherous flow of loving-kindness in him--to borrow one of his own\r\neccentric phrases; the same B. Hobbema who, were his significant\r\nreticence on the point, no unwise thing in him, by the way,\r\nconjecturally rendered into words, would seem in his own private\r\njudgment to have been treated illiberally enough by the art-dealers,\r\nart-critics, and academic hanging-committees, to say nothing of the art\r\npublic; well, it was of some other than the Marquis that Hobbema B.,\r\nreturning in moonlight from a choice assemblage, where he had been\r\nintroduced to him, and undergone the inevitable fascination of the\r\ncontact; it was of him that Brown enthusiastically exclaimed to his\r\ncompanion: ‘What a godsend to meet such a man! He is a set-off against\r\nthe battalions of his contraries. Between you and me, mankind taken in a\r\nlump are the gods’ job-lot; but, by heaven, the race that can produce a\r\nMarquis de Grandvin is not promiscuously to be contemned!’\r\n\r\nSee there how the talismanic something in the sort of nature here\r\nindicated can operate upon another nature though of a temper not\r\nfavourably disposed to receive its benign influence.\r\n\r\nIn the casual outcome of such a character, gay fancies and suggestions\r\nwithout stint, sallies of wit and bonhomie, all sharing more or less in\r\na certain lyric glow; herein the spiritual bounty to us would seem to be\r\nan unconsciousness in the almoner, involving, too, an indifference or\r\nunconcern as to who may appropriate, or as to what purpose the\r\nappropriation may be applied. In this particular, what recks the Marquis\r\nde Grandvin, for example? He is the ripe peach-tree shedding its\r\nabundance, careless of the garner; he is the Prince of Golconda at the\r\nball, some of whose innumerable diamond buttons drop from his raiment\r\nunheeded by him in the chance fleeting rubs and collisions of the dance.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 18"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWBYEAWFNPZ7F62GDZWF","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM9KKYYSD00Z4DF4G1243","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM9K7BQKQKJCVYCZ02G7N","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:32.359Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:45.439Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}