ng gentlemen of the colony. The sires had
originated a bold and determined policy, and had from first to last
pursued it with consistent vigour. The sons had neither brains to
conceive nor discretion to carry out the conceptions of others. The
sires had been persons whom it had been possible for the commonalty to
respect. The sons were persons whom it was impossible not to despise.
Surely a more superlatively commonplace and contemptible race of human
beings has seldom been seen on the earth than four-fifths of the second
generation of this bastard aristocracy of Upper Canada. It bore no
resemblance to any other aristocracy whereof history has preserved any
record. The old Roman commonalty, while they groaned beneath the iron
heel of tyranny, were one and all conscious of a secret pride in their
imperial oppressors. For the Roman aristocracy was an aristocracy of
nature. The Roman patricians made foreign rulers to crouch and tremble
at the name of Rome. Their triumphs were the triumphs of the nation.
Caius of Corioli, Furius Camillus, Titus Capitolinus, were names the
mere utterance of which stirred the Roman blood like the blast of a
trumpet. For many a long year after one haughty dictator had slept his
last sleep beneath the walls of Praeneste, and after another had taken
his final plunge beneath the yellow Tiber or from the Tarpeian rock,
their exploits furnished themes for tale and song around the Roman
camp-fires. These puissant representatives of the dominant class had
shown little sympathy for the plebeians, upon whom they had looked down
from a lofty height, and towards whom they had ever borne themselves
with haughtiness and disdain. But their pride was a something to be
tolerated by Romans of every degree, for they had achieved much glory
for the Roman name. In the words of one who has interpreted the
sentiment of those times with rare felicity, Rome could bear the pride
of him of whom herself was proud. The old French noblesse, again, were
not devoid of redeeming qualities. Their galling yoke would not have
been borne from reign to reign, and through century after century, even
by such seeming reconcilables as constituted the bulk of the French
populace during the ante-Revolutionary period, if they had all been like
the wicked St. Evremonde of Mr. Dickens's tragic story. As a class, they
had a subtle French grace about them which rendered their most grievous
exactions less hard to bear than were the exactions o