-and admiration, which makes others equally desirous of
following him, from the mere pleasure of admiration, and a sort of
secondary ambition, one of the most universal passions among men. These
two principles, strong, both of them, in our nature, create a voluntary
inequality and dependence. But amongst equals in condition there could
be no such bond, and this was supplied by confederacy; and as the first
of these principles created the senior and the knight, the second
produced the _conjurati fratres_, which, sometimes as a more extensive,
sometimes as a stricter bond, are perpetually mentioned in the old laws
and histories.

The relation between the lord and the vassal produced another
effect,--that the leader was obliged to find sustenance for his
followers, and to maintain them at his table, or give them some
equivalent in order to their maintenance. It is plain from these
principles, that this service on one hand, and this obligation to
support on the other, could not have originally been hereditary, but
must have been entirely in the free choice of the parties.

But it is impossible that such a polity could long have subsisted by
election alone. For, in the first place, that natural love which every
man has to his own kindred would make the chief willing to perpetuate
the power and dignity he acquired in his own blood,--and for that
purpose, even during his own life, would raise his son, if grown up, or
his collaterals, to such a rank as they should find it only necessary to
continue their possession upon his death. On the other hand, if a
follower was cut off in war, or fell by natural course, leaving his
offspring destitute, the lord could not so far forget the services of
his vassal as not to continue his allowance to his children; and these
again growing up, from reason and gratitude, could only take their
knighthood at his hands from whom they had received their education; and
thus, as it could seldom happen but that the bond, either on the side of
the lord or dependant, was perpetuated, some families must have been
distinguished by a long continuance of this relation, and have been
therefore looked upon in an honorable light, from that only circumstance
from whence honor was derived in the Northern world. Thus nobility was
seen in Germany; and in the earliest Anglo-Saxon times some families
were distinguished by the title of Ethelings, or of noble descent. But
this nobility of birth was rather a qualificat