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It is as true a thing as ever was said. But it was said badly. He ought not to have attempted it in metre until he was feeling in the mood.

I can hear arguments on the other side. A coronet is more amenable to the will of man. You can buy a coronet. You cannot buy a kind heart. To call kind hearts "better" than coronets, therefore, is like calling fine weather "better" than a good boat. For the sea the boat is more important than the weather. You can guarantee the one, you can't the other. You can make sure of your coronet, but not of your kind heart.

Again, a coronet does not change or fade—money being always taken for granted. It is incorruptible. It is not subject to our poor mortal years; but what it is on the brow of the infant, that it remains on the senile and wrinkled front of him last ticked off to answer questions in the House of Lords; but a Kind Heart!... Oh! Chronos!

Again, a coronet is heritable. A kind heart hardly so. A coronet is definable. All are agreed upon it. It is there or it is not there, and that's an end of it. Not so the Kind Heart. One having seized on a companion for ever, and all on account of a Kind Heart, many will say, "I can't for the life of me discover what he (she) saw in her (him) to make him (her) marry her (him)." But no one ever says that of a coronet. They may wonder what the coronet saw in the non-coronet, but never what the non-coronet saw in the coronet. When the fellow (or the wench) mates upwards with a coronet everybody knows why; it's plain sailing and there can be no dispute. A coronet, I say, is something objective, substantial, real. It is made of ashwood covered with plush, it has spikes and each spike a ball on the top. But who shall define a Kind Heart? It is one thing to one man, one to another; it is elusive; it is all in the mind like the Metaphysician's Donkey.