were ready to admit this position. Ελευθέρως δούλευε, douλoç oйk ton, said Menander, as if he were addressing a page or esquire of later chivalry. Plato makes the Spartan say, καὶ καλλωπίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ καλῶς δουλεῦσαι μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ καλῶς ἄρξαι. Another philosopher was asked, who were noble ; he replied, "those who despise riches and glory and pleasure and life." Sophocles adopts the same principle. Persons of low birth may have noble minds, and may become noble: κἀξ ἀγεννήτων ἄρα μῦθοι καλῶς πίπτουσιν· ἥδε γὰρ γυνὴ Plato even affirmed, that to know how to obey required as generous a disposition and as good an education as to know how to command. The renown and exaltation of Cicero, who speaks of himself as "homo per se cognitus," may be fairly weighed against the silly pride and jealousy of the nobles towards men of merit, which he describes.5 And we know that even the Junian house looked upon L. Brutus, a plebeian, as the founder of its nobility. To be as noble as the king was the pride of Diomedes, when he said to Agamemnon, σοὶ δὲ διάνδιχα δῶκε Κρόνου παῖς ἀγκυλομήτεω· Without alluding to the great principles which were afterwards established by the Christian religion, it is obvious that these sentiments could only gain additional force and extent by the lapse of time, which always confirms the judgments of nature. We can behold in life as well as in history 'De Legibus, VI. 3 Sophocles, Trachiniæ, 61. * Stobæi Florileg. III, 199. ⚫ Cat. I, 18. " II. IX, 37. ⚫ In Verrem, art. II, lib. V, 70, 71. and in poetry "how that genterie is not annexed to possession." For God it wot, men mournful often find A lordes sone do shame and vilanie. Then cometh our veray gentillesse of grace; "The king may scatter titles and dignities, till lords, like the swarm of Dons in Sancho's Island, shall become as troublesome as so many flesh-flies; but he may not save those among whom he scatters them from rottenness and oblivion." The king can give letters of nobility, but he cannot bestow the sentiment which gives it virtue: his favour cannot grant the inheritance which alone ennobles an illustrious birth; and his wrath cannot take it away. "The emperor," says St. Gregory the Great, "can make an ape be called a lion, but he cannot make him become one."2 Princes and lords may flourish and may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made; but the noble chivalry of the heart, Flos veterum virtusque virûm, must be held as an inalienable privilege which is the gift of God alone. The Emperor Sigismund replied to a favourite who begged that he would ennoble him, "I can give you privileges and fiefs, but I cannot make you noble." "He who does not possess these virtues," says the poet Arnaud de Marvelh, "though he may have the name of chevalier, I do not regard him as a knight." As Talbot exclaims when he plucks off the garter from the "craven leg" of Falstaff: He then that is not furnished in this sort Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight, And Pierre Cardinal, the old poet of Provence, ἐλεύθερος γὰρ οὔτις ἐστὶ πλὴν Διός. The ancients, notwithstanding their immoderate regard for birth and nobility, were not altogether insensible to the stubborn facts which were against their theory. "Noble sons do not always spring from noble fathers, nor evil from evil," says Sophocles; 66 but there is no trusting," he adds, "" to anything mortal."2 Themistocles was able to make his son Cleophantus a good horseman; but he failed in every effort to make him a good man like himself. Aristides could not impart virtue to Lysimachus his son. Pericles had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, whom he made inferior to no Athenian in horsemanship and music, and in all gymnastic exercises; but he could make neither of them good men. Thucydides spared no expense in the education of two sons, Melesia and Stephanus, who became equal 3 Eschyl. Prometh. Vinct. 50. to the best of the Athenians in the games; but in the essential thing, virtue, they were both deficient.1 The heir of Q. Fabius Maximus was disinherited by the sentence of the prætor, as being unworthy to enter into the fields of his glorious father: there were also degenerate sons to the Hortensian family. Young Scipio, the son of Africanus, was a fool and a prodigal. Marcus, the son of Cicero, to whom the latter dedicated his immortal work De Officiis, was a drunkard. Horace alludes to the infamous Lævinus, who was of the ancient Valerian family. Plutarch remarks that the wretched miser Perseus was not descended from any Lydian or Phoenician merchant, but that he was allied to Alexander and Philip. Commodus, educated with care, was the son of Marcus Antoninus; Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, were sons of Constantine the Great; Arcadius and Honorius were the weak and unhappy sons of the great Theodosius; Caligula and Agrippina were the children of Germanicus. What a shade of degeneracy is visible between John Ducas Vatazes and his son Theodore; between the founder, who sustained the weight, and the heir, who enjoyed the splendour of the imperial crown! Ottocar, king of Bohemia, was of more worth in his cradle than Wenceslaus, his son, when a bearded man. Philippe-le-bel was son of St. Louis; Charles II. of Naples was the son of Charles I.; James and Frederick were the sons of Peter III, of Aragon. No paladin was more renowned for heroic piety than Count Josselin, to whom succeeded a son infamous for drunkenness and luxury, who lost the principality, and died of hunger in the prisons of the Saracens. Thus it is of human worth; and, as Dante says, ' Plato, Meno. 2 Mar. Sanuti Tors. Secreta Fidel. Cruc. III, 15. Gesta Dei per Francos. So ordains He who bestows it, that as his free gift If we extend these reflections to later times, and view the actions of nobility with regard to those great religious duties which the Christian religion imposed upon it, and in the discharge of which alone can its consistency with that religion, as far as individuals are concerned, be maintained, we shall not be induced to dwell with greater pleasure upon the feelings connected with it, than when we confined our view to the sentiments and actions of classical antiquity. In the first age of Christianity it is certain, as indeed might have been foreseen by merely human wisdom, that not many persons of this class became converts. The earliest of the Christians seem to have hardly contemplated the possibility of a period arriving like that of the middle ages of the Church, when holy bishops, like St. Hugh of Burgundy, who lay enshrined in Lincoln, would have been borne to their graves by kings and by warriors, who were themselves holy. In the next book we shall take a general view of this most interesting and sublime history, and behold examples of sainted kings supported by devout nobility; but no one needs to be told that this belongs more to recollection than to experience: perhaps a future age may exhibit something similar to what was the first condition of Christians; perhaps it will be reserved for those to behold the triumph of the Church, who generously followed her through the obscurity and dangers of her infant state. To take a recent instance, it was the nobility, however it might boast of illustrious exceptions, not the chivalry of France, which first deserted from the holy standard of the cross. "You attack religion, it is true; you ridicule Purgatory, canto VII. |