Yet it
must be added that he is always thoroughly harmless. He flutters about
innumerable dovecots, without ever fluttering those who dwell in them,
and, in course of time, he comes to be known and accepted everywhere
as a useful man. As might be supposed, he is never obtrusively manly.
The rough pursuits of the merely athletic repel him, yet he has the
knack of assuming an interest where he feels it not, and is able to
prattle quite pleasantly about sports in which he takes little or no
active part. At the same time it must be admitted that he holds a gun
fairly straight, and does not disgrace himself when the necessity
of slaughtering a friend's pheasants interrupts for a few hours the
rehearsals of private theatricals, in company with the friend's wife.
Certainly he is not a fool. He gauges with great accuracy his own
capacities, and carefully limits his ambition to those smaller desires
which, since they exact no vaulting power, are never likely to bring
about a fall on the other side. The objects of his admiration are
mean; and since he meanly admires them, he comes quite naturally under
the Thackerayan definition of a Snob.
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