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and weathers of time !-for new nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time. Those that are first raised to nobility, are commonly more virtuous, but less innocent, than their descendants-for there is rarely any rising but by a commixture of good and evil arts,-but it is reason' the memory of their virtues remain to their posterity, and their faults die with themselves. Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry; and he that is not industrious, envieth him that is: besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay when others rise, can hardly avoid motions3 of envy. On the other side, nobility extinguisheth the passive envy from others towards them, because they are in possession of honour. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their business; for people naturally bend to them as born in some sort to command.

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1 Reason. Reasonable; right. See page 93.

2 Stay. Check; cessation of progress.

See page III.

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3 Motions. Internal action; feelings; impulses. The motions of sin, which

were by the law.'-Romans vii. 5.

ANNOTATIONS.

'We will speak of nobility first as a portion of an estate.'

In reference to nobility as an institution, it is important to remark how great a difference it makes whether the Order of nobles shall include-as in Germany and most other countries -all the descendants of noble families, or, as in ours, only the eldest; the rest sinking down into commoners. The former system is very bad, dividing society into distinct castes, almost like those of the Hindus. Our system, through the numerous younger branches of noble families, shades off, as it were, the distinction between noble and not-noble, and keeps up the continuity of the whole frame.

'As for nobility in particular persons.'

In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing was ever better said than by Bishop Warburton-as is reported—in the House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute which had arisen between a peer of noble family and one of a new creation. He said that, 'high birth was a thing which he never knew any one disparage, except those who had it not; and he never knew any one make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.' This is worthy of a place among Bacon's' Pros and Cons,' though standing half-way between the two: Nobilitatem nemo contemnit, nisi cui abest; nemo jactitat, nisi cui nihil aliud est quo glorietur.'

It is a remarkable circumstance that noble birth is regarded very much according to the etymology of the word, from nosco:' for, a man's descent from any one who was much known, is much more thought of than the moral worth of his ancestors. And it is curious that a person of so exceptionable a character that no one would like to have had him for a father, may confer a kind of dignity on his great-great-great-grandchildren. An instance has been known of persons, who were the descendants of a celebrated and prominent character in the

Civil War, and who was one of the Regicides, being themselves zealous royalists, and professing to be ashamed of their ancestor. And it is likely that if he were now living, they would renounce all intercourse with him. Yet it may be doubted whether they would not feel mortified if any one should prove to them that they had been under a mistake, and that they were in reality descended from another person, a respectable but obscure individual, not at all akin to the celebrated regicide.

It was a remark by a celebrated man, himself a gentleman born, but with nothing of nobility, that the difference between a man with a long line of noble ancestors, and an upstart, is that the one knows for certain, what the other only conjectures as highly probable, that several of his forefathers deserved hanging.' Yet it is certain, though strange, that, generally speaking, the supposed upstart would rather have this very thing a certainty-provided there were some great and celebrated exploit in question-than left to conjecture. If he were to discover that he could trace up his descent distinctly to a man who had deserved hanging, for robbing—not a traveller of his purse, but a king of his empire, or a neighbouring State of a province, he would be likely to make no secret of it, and even to be better pleased, inwardly, than if he had made out a long line of ancestors who had been very honest farmers.

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion ever to think much about it; which will be the case, if it be neither too high nor too low for its existing situation. Those who have sunk much below, or risen much above, what suits their birth, are apt to be uneasy, and consequently touchy. The one feels ashamed of his situation; the other, of his ancestors and other relatives. A nobleman's or gentleman's son, or grandson, feels degraded by waiting at table, or behind a counter; and a member of a liberal profession is apt to be ashamed of his father's having done so; and both are apt to take offence readily, unless they are of a truly magnanimous character. It was remarked by a celebrated person, a man of a gentleman's family, and himself a gentleman by station, 'I have often thought that if I had risen like A. B., from the very lowest of the people, by my own honourable exertions, I should have rather felt proud of so great a feat, than like him, sore and touchy; but I

suppose I must be mistaken; for I observe that the far greater part of those who are so circumstanced, have just the opposite feeling.'

The characters, however, of true inward nobility are ashamed of nothing but base conduct, and are not ready to take offence at supposed affronts; because they keep clear of whatever deserves contempt, and consider what is undeserved as beneath

their notice.

ESSAY XV. OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES.

SH

HEPHERDS of people had need know the calendars of tempests in State, which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality, as natural tempests about the equinoctia ;' and as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in States :

'Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus

Sæpe monet, fraudesque et operta tumescere bella.”2

Libels and licentious discourses against the State, when they are frequent and open; and in like sort, false news often running up and down to the disadvantage of the State, and hastily embraced, are amongst the signs of troubles. Virgil, giving the pedigree of fame, saith, she was sister to the giants :

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As if fames1 were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less indeed the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever, he noted it right, that seditious tumults and seditious fames differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminineespecially if it come to that, that the best actions of a State, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced; for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith, 'Conflata magna invidia, seu bene, seu male, gesta premunt." Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity should be a remedy

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2 He often warns of dark fast-coming tumults, hidden fraud, and open warfare, swelling proud.'-Virgil, Georg. i. 465.

3 Virg. En. iv. 179.

'Enraged against the Gods, revengeful Earth

Produced her, last of the Titanian birth.'-Dryden.

4 Fames. Reports; rumours. "The fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come.”—Genesis xlv. 16.

5 Plausible. Laudable; deserving of applause. See page 85.

Great envy being excited, they condemn acts, whether good or bad.' (Quoted

probably from memory.)—Tac. Hist. i. 7.

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