  To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory,
from the common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of
an Earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the
grotesque.  He said to himself, “Now am I finely tinselled, indeed!
 The spectre-knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a
spectre-earl--a dizzy flight for a callow wing!  An’ this go on, I
shall presently be hung like a very maypole with fantastic gauds and
make-believe honours.