that men of rank
are men of education, frequently of culture, and are useful to the
nation as patrons of art and of science; therefore nobility frequently
means absolute gentility. But in America what good can be said of those
who, living upon the fortunes of fathers or grandfathers, amassed in
honest trade,--residents of a particular street which is thereby
rendered pluperfectly genteel,--with no recommendation but that derived
from fashion and idleness,--draw the lines of social demarcation more
closely than they are drawn in Europe, intellect and accomplishments
being systematically snubbed where the possessors cannot show their
family passes? Is not this attempt to graft the foibles of an older and
more corrupt civilization upon our institutions, a disgrace to
republicanism? Were the truth known, we should be able to report the
existence of many advocates of monarchy, a privileged class, and an
established church, among those into whose ancestry it would be unsafe
to dig deeper than a second generation; by digging deeper we might touch
sugar or tumble into a vat of molasses, and then what blushes for false
pride!

A very different idea of a great man from that of the vulgar do we get
out of Landor's writings. His Diogenes tells us, (and very like the
original seeker after honesty do we take him to be,) that "the great
man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It
is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws and is able to
correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious
both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or
occasion for any kind of conceit, no reason for being or for appearing
different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most
select company when it pleases him." And Petrarca says that "Time the
Sovran is first to discover the truly great." Yet, though we put faith
in the justice of posterity, even Time plays many a one false through
misplaced favoritism. "They, O Timotheus," exclaims the imaginary
Lucian, "who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, most
worthy of our admiration. It is in these wrecks as in those at sea,--the
best things are not always saved. Hencoops and empty barrels bob upon
the surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted
images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those who
most resembled them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured