and the instances were by no means few, in which insurgent nobles were, not fought against as rebels involved in the atrocity of civil war, but contended with and treated with on terms of equality, by their nominal sovereigns. Literature now awoke from her age-long slumber in the songs of the Troubadours, whose lays were of deeds of valor, and of love and beauty as the prize of the brave alone. The crusades, seconded, indeed, by religious fanaticism and by national antipathies, are to be regarded chiefly as a fierce and desperate outbreak of the military spirit. They could not have been conducted as they were for two centuries, with immense apparatus and at the most appalling sacrifice, for the mere purpose of defending pilgrims and rescuing the holy sepulchre. But Europe and its broils presented too narrow a theatre for all the restless and ambitious spirits that sought glory in what was then the only avenue to glory; and the vast field of Oriental warfare was therefore laid open and kept open by multitudes who were determined not to die without the insignia of command and of victory. The armies of Christendom then bristled with innumerable heroes, each aspiring to deathless renown. But the very weight of their names broke down the car of fame. They trod one another into oblivion. They gorged, far beyond repletion, the universal appetite for heroism, and thus prepared the way for a new standard of greatness and a new stage in the progress of humanity.

The habits of command on the one hand, and of submission on the other, generated by centuries of war, extended themselves into the ensuing period of repose. Those who had been leaders in the field retained the allegiance and homage of their followers. War, essentially aristocratic, had introduced broad marks of distinction between those in command and those under command; and these marks had been in numerous instances transmitted for more than one generation, the knight or captain training his son for honorable posts in the profession of arms, while the common soldier bequeathed to his son the undistinguished toils and burdens of the field. The termination of the crusades left the military commanders all over Christendom possessed of controlling authority and influence, and the objects of universal veneration; and, in the general weariness and exhaustion after long strife, and willingness to court repose at all hazards, they were enabled to secure in perpetuity for their families such titles, immunities,

and privileges, as constituted them a distinct order from their fellow-citizens. At this era, noble birth presents itself as the prime object of general esteem and deference. Hereditary rank was revered and worshipped, as physical strength and military prowess had successively been before. This was a step in advance of preceding times; for in families surrounded by the advantages of fortune, in men born to fill a large and honored place, there were likely to be combined many of the traits and acquirements most deserving of esteem. In. point of fact, though in the light of our own day the feudal barons present many repulsive points of character, we yet can trace in them the outlines of many great and beneficent virtues, of magnanimity, hospitality, truthfulness, and sincere though blind religious reverence. The halls and castles of the hereditary aristocracy became also the nurseries of all the arts and refinements of modern social life, and radiating points for forms of civilization that were to extend through whole communities.

We shall not, of course, be understood as intimating that the idea of hereditary rank had its origin in the Middle Ages. Did we say this, all history would bely us. From the earliest times, the reigning monarch always transmitted his sceptre to his son, if he could; but he generally left him in a condition to enforce his claim, and hereditary succession seems to have been tolerated rather than revered, except in Judea, where the expectation of the Messiah in the royal line of David kept his race sacred even in dethronement and exile. In all other kingdoms there was a frequent change of dynasty, and a long reigning family always became unpopular. We find, also, the germs of an hereditary aristocracy in the patrician families in Rome; but one could always cut his way into the patrician ranks by the sword; in the best days of the republic, a man of ignoble birth might, by preeminent merit, enrol himself among the oldest names in the senate; and under the emperors, there was no patrician privilege, immunity, or office, which was not open even to the emancipated slave. Hereditary rank, as an indelible characteristic of persons and families, had its origin in the northern nations, and seems not to have been invested with its full sacredness and power till the feudal ages, when persons of royal and noble descent seem to have been regarded as formed of a

purer clay and endowed with a more celestial spirit than the mass of serfs and subjects.

But this state of things lasted only till it had served its purpose. It kept society in quietness, till new, more powerful, more beneficent elements were brought into action. Hereditary rank, indeed, is still recognized in every kingdom in Europe, but the glory has departed from it. It is no longer revered as of divine appointment, or of intrinsic worth; but for the most part suffered for the security of ancient institutions, or to feed harmless vanity. Royal families are kept on the throne, not now as God's chosen and anointed, but to prevent the commotions that might attend the election of monarchs, and to preserve from the rush of greedy aspirants an office which may long retain its pomp and glitter, but which, because hereditary, has in many monarchies been constrained to yield increasing portions of its power to ministries, that do the people's bidding, or resign. In France, the landmarks of hereditary nobility were swept away by the revolution, and the few surviving representatives of ancient families share the doubtful honor with multitudes that care not to name their grandfathers. In Germany, Italy, and Spain, the titles and the pride of the nobility remain, but often, under circumstances of outward depression, distinguished from plebeian penury only by laziness and ill-temper. In England, the oldest nobles now part their once serried ranks to admit on equal footing the aristocracy of wealth and talent, raised from the most obscure parentage and the humblest walks in life.

But we must return to trace the next stage of social progress. In the age immediately following the last crusade, the cities of Europe were small, poor, of almost no political significance, their population little advanced in the arts of life, their strong men and available resources exhausted by incessant drafts for the support of war. The baronial castles were centres of far more influence than the most populous cities, and the name of a citizen had only plebeian and servile associations connected with it. But with peace industry awoke. The useful arts were stimulated into rapid growth. Manufacturing skill and enterprise increased with amazing rapidity, especially in Flanders, Germany, and France. The mariner's compass, too, in the fifteenth century, converted commerce from a paltry and precarious coasting-trade

into an annual circulation of the wealth of empires. Sails whitened every sea and girdled every zone. The stormy Cape of Good Hope was doubled; the New World rose to view from the vast waste of waters; and the treasures of both Indies were poured into the lap of Europe. The useful and lucrative pursuits of manufactures and commerce were of course despised by the titled aristocracy, and thus fell into the hands of private citizens, chiefly in what are now the great cities of Europe; and by the wealth and power which flowed in upon them through these channels, the commons, from mere retainers upon titled greatness and loiterers for the crumbs of royal or aristocratic favor disdainfully bestowed, became at once a separate estate, prepared in substantial influence to vie with the nobility. As they grew rich, the cities were enabled to secure for themselves, by purchase or negotiation, important immunities and privileges,-corporate rights and powers, that defended them from the encroachments of the nobles and the oppression of the crown, porate rights also for separate guilds and crafts, adapted to the protection and advancement of every form of industry.

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From that era, almost to the present time, wealth has manifestly been the chief object of pursuit and desire throughout the civilized world. And this must be regarded as an onward step in the progress of the race. Not that wealth is in itself any more venerable than strength, or prowess, or noble birth. But, so far as its acquisition is left free, it is the representative of many civic virtues, and of many reasonable and worthy objects of desire. It cannot be obtained without intelligence, enterprise, industry, and thrift. It can hardly be enjoyed, without encouraging art, skill, and science, and diffusing substantial good at every stage of its circulation.

The era of Mammon-worship has been an era of unprecedented improvement in all that contributes to the outward comfort and beauty of life. It has stimulated inventive genius, completed the division of labor, brought machinery to a point of perfection which cannot easily be surpassed, levelled mountains, filled up valleys, founded vast empires in the wilderness, united continents, and woven, with its steamdriven shuttles, bonds of common interest, neighbourhood, and fraternity between the most distant nations. It is manifest, that, in the generations next preceding our own, wealth has been the chief medium of extended civilization, the mainspring

of enterprise and effort, the arbiter of the destiny of Christendom. The merchant princes of Europe have held the balance of the nations. The great commercial cities have given law to the world. The Rothschilds would have lost power, had they emptied their coffers, and taken their choice of thrones.

Nowhere has wealth wrought such miracles as in Great Britain. The Reform Bill, in itself a revolution hardly less important than that which exiled the last of the Stuarts, was merely a victory of pounds sterling over ancestral titles and entailed honors. The vast Eastern possessions of England have been won and kept far less by British arms and diplomacy than by British gold. The old nobility has sustained its magnificence only by frequent alliances with plebeian wealth, and by engrafted scions from the counting-room and the banking-house.

In this country, unless the pursuit has been of late relaxed, the universal scramble has been for wealth. This passion glowed even in the bosoms of the stern, iron-hearted Puritans, and the more fiercely, because it was the only earthly fire left burning. Their ascetic morality frowned on all amusement and relaxation, on all the appliances of taste and elegance. They suppressed the forthputtings of fancy, and clipped all beautiful plumage from the wings of genius. They cast out every other idol from the temple, but left the colossal image of Mammon, "the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not." It would seem as if the whole force of desire, enthusiasm, and ambition, ready to leap out in a thousand directions, had been pent up at all except this single vent, and here poured forth with overwhelming speed and power. British enterprise early saw, in the cupidity of the colonists, a rivalry to be suppressed by no gentle means; and it was to this one point, the binding down in poverty of provinces that would be rich, that the whole machinery of British usurpation and oppression was directed. Emigration from New England has diffused throughout the country this indomitable spirit of gain, insomuch that foreigners, however discourteous, have hardly been chargeable with injustice in styling our republic a plutocracy. This state of things has left in our language one singular vestige of itself, which will no doubt long survive it, in that heathenish phrase (we are glad to find that it is not wholly an Ameri