of war, diminished the envy that, in trading and studious nations, would have else pried into their title. They were looked upon as men who played high for a great stake."

Partly succeeding to, partially accompanying, and to a great extent superseding, these old warlords are the comparatively modern peace-lords, of whom Emerson says:

THE MODERN PEACE-LORDS.

"The new age brings new qualities into request. The virtues of pirates give way to those of planters, merchants, senators, and scholars. Comity, social talent, and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part also. I have met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether more or less true in its particulars, carries a general truth. 'How came the Duke of Bedford by his great landed estates? His ancestor, having traveled on the continent—a lively, pleasant man-became the companion of a foreign prince, wrecked on the Devonshire coast, where a Mr. Russell lived. The prince recommended him to Henry the Eighth, who, liking his company, gave him a large share of the plundered church lands.' The pretense is that the noble is of unbroken descent from the Norman, and has never worked for eight hundred years. But the fact is otherwise. Where is Bohun? Where is De Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the silk-mercer, lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing; especially skillful lawyers, nobody's sons, who did some piece of work, at a nice time, for Government, and were rewarded with ermine."

This illustrative "historiette" is substantially true; and is told at some length in Burke's "British Peerage." The "foreign prince wrecked on the Devonshire coast," was the Archduke Philip of Austria, only son of the Emperor Maximilian I, and husband of the mad Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and the father of the Emperor Charles V. This John Russell, recommended by the Archduke Philip, entered the service of Henry VIII, and in 1538 was raised to the peerage as Baron Russell. In 1540, when the great monasteries were dissolved, his lordship obtained a grant to himself, his wife, and their heirs, of the site of the Abbey of Tavistock, and of extensive possessions belonging thereunto. In 1550 he was made Earl of Bedford, and in 1694 his descendant, the fifth earl, was created Duke of Bedford. There are few English houses who have within the last two centuries played so great a part in history as this of Bedford, founded by an untitled gentleman. Among the most notable of this family were the patriot William, Lord Russell, son and heir of the first Duke of Bedford, who was judicially murdered in 1683; and the statesman long famous as Lord John Russell, third son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, and who died as Earl Russell.

Emerson is ready to grant that the English peerage, as such, has had and still has its uses. He says: "If one asks, in the critical spirit of

the day, what service this class have rendered? uses appear, or they would have perished long ago. Some of these are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a part of unconscious history. Their institution is one step in the progress of society. For a race yields a nobility in some form, however we name the lords, as surely as it yields women." The most noticeable present use of the peerage he thinks is that it forms a recognized school of manners; and "whatever tends to form manners, or to finish men, has a great value."

MANNERS OF THE PEERAGE.

"The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to wealth and power, who have run through every country, and kept in every country the best of company. You can not wield great agencies without lending yourself to them, and when it happens that the spirit of the earl meets his rank and duties, we have the best examples of behavior. Power of any kind readily appears in the manners; and beneficent power -le talent de bien faire-gives a majesty which can not be concealed or resisted. 'The upper classes,' say the people here, 'have only birth, and not thoughts.' Yes, but they have manners, and it is wonderful how much talent runs into manners; nowhere and never so much as in England. They have the sense of a superiority, the absence of the ambitious effort which disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the power to command, among their other luxuries, the presence of the most distinguished men at their festive meetings. The economist who asks, 'Of what use are

lords?' may learn to ask, with Franklin, 'Of what use is a baby?' ` They have been a social church, proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring the lover and the loved. Politeness is the ritual of society as prayers are of the Church, a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to the age in which it grew. It is a romance adorning English life with a fairer horizon; a midway heaven fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of the nobleman, really made him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great-hearted."

Yet there is presented also quite another aspect of the manners of the English aristocracy. And this other aspect must be noted. At court, and in the very highest circles, as far as we can judge, the code of manners, except in so far as those belonging to those narrow circles are concerned, is the height of ill-breeding. Emerson touches upon this side briefly but emphatically.

THE NOBLES AND THE COMMONERS.

"Most of the nobles are only chargeable with idleness, which, because it squanders such vast power of benefits, has the mischief of crime. My friend [whom we suppose to be Carlyle] said: 'They might be little providences upon earth, and they are for the most part jockeys and fops.' Campbell says: 'Acquaintance with the nobility I could never keep up; it requires a life of idleness, dressing, and attendance on their parties.' A man of wit, who is also one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend that he could not enter their houses without being made to feel that they were

great lords, and he a low plebeian. With the tribe of artistes, including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no terms, but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and Mario sang at the houses of the Duke of Wellington and other grandees, a ribbon was stretched between the singer and the company."

THE UNTITLED NOBILITY.

"I suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect is driving men out of this society, as if the noble were slow to receive the lesson of the times, and had not learned to disguise his pride of place. A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their society, with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers, and outstripping them, as often, in the race of honor and influence. That cultivated class is large and ever enlarging. It is computed that, with titles and without, there are seventy thousand of these people coming and going in London, who make up what is called 'high society.' They can not shut their eyes to the fact that an untitled nobility possesses all the power, without the inconveniences, that belong to rank; and the rich Englishman goes over the world at the present day, drawing more than all the advantages which the strongest of his kings could command.

"The revolution in society has reached this class. The great powers of industrial art have no exclusion of name or blood. The tools of our time, namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education, belong to those who can handle them; and their effect has been that the advantages once confined to men of family are now open to the whole middle class. The road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can travel in his cart."