to be? A
clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been bred
up genteelly at Eton and the university)--young Mr. George Canning, at
the commencement of the French Revolution, sneered at "Roland the Just,
with ribbons in his shoes," and the dandies, who then wore buckles,
voted the sarcasm monstrous killing. It was a joke, my dear, worthy of a
lackey, or of a silly smart parvenu, not knowing the society into which
his luck had cast him (God help him! in later years, they taught him
what they were!), and fancying in his silly intoxication that simplicity
was ludicrous and fashion respectable. See, now, fifty years are gone,
and where are shoebuckles? Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable
past off the toes of all Europe!

How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this respect
for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empire of Napoleon
have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a
coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields,
after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder?--the bold Republican who
led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the
Holy Roman Empire to the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten
imperial heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the
father of it. It has always been so. They won't amalgamate. A country
must be governed by the one principle or the other. But give, in a
republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and it works and plots
and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into place, and you find
democracy out of doors. Is it good that the aristocracy should so
triumph?--that is a question that you may settle according to your own
notions and taste; and permit me to say, I do not care twopence how you
settle it. Large books have been written upon the subject in a variety
of languages, and coming to a variety of conclusions. Great statesmen
are there in our country, from Lord Londonderry down to Mr. Vincent,
each in his degree maintaining his different opinion. But here, in the
matter of Napoleon, is a simple fact: he founded a great, glorious,
strong, potent republic, able to cope with the best aristocracies in
the world, and perhaps to beat them all; he converts his republic into
a monarchy, and surrounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic
institutions; and you know what becomes of him. The people estranged,
the aristocracy faithless (when did they ev