text: " No doubt all this was perfectly true; the whole was selfish supercilious and exclusive; one red riband matched against another one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles