ive
simplicities of standing, was that a shock to its hereditary grandeur?
If it _had_ been, there perished the efficient fountain of nobility as
any _national_ or _patriotic_ honour; that being extinguished, it became
a vile, _personal_ distinction. For instance, like the Roman Fabii, the
major part of the English nobility was destroyed in the contest (though
so short a contest) of the two Roses. To restore it at all, recourse was
had to every mode of healing family wounds through distant marriage
connections, etc. But in the meantime, to a Spanish or a Scottish
nobleman, who should have insisted upon the _directness_ of his descent,
the proper answer would have been: 'Dog! in what kennel were you lurking
when such and such civil feuds were being agitated? As an honest man, as
a gallant man, ten times over you ought to have died, had you felt,
which the English nobility of the fifteenth century _did_ feel, that
your peerage was your summons to the field of battle and the scaffold.'
For, again in later years than the fifteenth century, the English
nobility--those even who, like the Scotch, had gained their family
wealth by plundering the Church--in some measure washed out this
original taint by standing forward as champions of what they considered
(falsely or truly) national interests. The Russells, the Cavendishes,
the Sidneys, even in times of universal profligacy, have held aloft the
standard of their order; and no one can forget the many peers in Charles
I.'s time, such as Falkland, or the Spencers (Sunderland), or the
Comptons (Northampton), who felt and owned their paramount duty to lie
in public self-dedication, and died therefore, and oftentimes left their
inheritances a desolation. 'Thus far'--oh heavens! with what bitterness
I said this, knowing it a thing undeniable by W. W. or by Sir
George--you, the peerages that pretend to try conclusions with the
English, you--French, German, Walloon, Spanish, Scottish--are able to do
so simply because you are _faineans_, because in time of public danger
you hid yourselves under your mammas' petticoats, whilst the glorious
work of reaping a bloody harvest was being done by others.

But the English peerage also celebrates services in the Senate as well
as in the field. Look for a moment at the house of Cecil. The interest
in this house was national, and at the same time romantic. Two families
started off--one might say _simultaneously_--from the same radix, for
the differe