s not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here
lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy:
what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he
restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he
never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it
his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There
is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the
wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some
absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway
slaves; some friend of Poland;[436] some Philhellene;[437] some
fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and third generation,
and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some
just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of
fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And these
are the centers of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses.
These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize
beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are in the theory,
the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir
Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who
worshiped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who constitute the
natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or only
on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be
greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of
the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears. The
theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It
divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods,--

"As Heaven and Earth are fairer far[438]
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,
In form and shape compact and beautiful;
So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads;
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us,
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness:
... for, 'tis the eternal law,
That first in beauty shall be first in might."

19. Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a
narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of
courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and
reference, as to its inner and imperial court, t