perennial vaunt of
ancestors who "came over with the Conqueror," and of Tennyson's musical
mendacity about the "daughter of an hundred Earls," the families who can
trace back to even so recent a date as the reign of the Stuarts are
very rare. {35} Frequently hundreds of years elapsed before the historic
titles were "revived" to gild some parvenu. Since then these families
have been kept up only by intermarriages with later parvenus.

The royal family itself has been repeatedly on the point of extinction,
and the continuity of the line only maintained by extraordinary efforts.

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IDLENESS, luxury, and more or less flagrant debauchery have done their
appointed work in removing the deteriorated forms of human life {36}
from the world, that their room might be had for more acceptable
growths.

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SOCIETY has been most aptly likened to a vat of good wine, which is scum
and froth at the top, dregs and sediment at the bottom, and good, pure,
clear liquor in the middle. Vice does admirable work in skimming away
the supernatant scum and in drawing off the dregs and settlings.

Unceasing fermentation seems to be a condition necessary to the health
of society. The humblest work incessantly to lift themselves into the
ranks of {37} the middle-classes, the middle-classes strive as earnestly
to make themselves plutocrats, aristocrats, and lordlings. This ambition
for worldly advancement is one of society's most powerful adjuncts
for good. When a man at last reaches the social summit he desists
from further efforts at improvement. He becomes like a man who after
struggling forward to reach the head of the procession refuses to march
another step. Some vice, mayhap merely over-eating, is likely to remove
him and secure the ground for another man to come to the front, who
is also removed summarily when he becomes obstructive. If the
fortune-builder is {38} not thus removed, his children are subject to
attack.

Were it not for this, the upper stratum of society would speedily
become so crowded that ascent to it would be impossible, all healthful,
ambitious motive be taken away from the middle and lower classes,
stagnation follow, and society perish from congestion.

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HISTORY is full of illustrations of the benefits of vice in assisting to
shape the destinies of Nations and peoples. Take, for example, the {39}
Bourbons whose stupidity and tyranny h