always must exercise over the less gifted minds-in short to literary and scientific men. There are now above sixteen peers in France who had no other claim to the peerage than that of thought. He who denies that such examples are not inciting to others has in my opinion no correct view of mankind. Britain, though formerly far in advance of France by always admitting commoners to the high peerages, has now remained behind her; and all the distinction that science can aspire to in England by way of political honor, is knighthood, once so degraded under James I. that people would pay fines rather than accept it. Strange that no minister has sought additional strength by boldly bestowing the peerage on scientific men; while mere riches in many cases have obtained the peerage. Yet, if the French have thus nobly broken the path-it was Napoleon who first saw how wise it was they stand in another respect much behind the English, namely, by promoting petty vanity in the citizens in bestowing profusely those outward signs-ribbons-which appear to the national taste of the Anglican race beneath a manly spirit. A friend of liberty could not read, without a degree of mortification, the many debates on the "cross of July" which began almost as soon as the smoke of the guns at the barricades had vanished. Ribbons, and titles without their being the expression of something substantial, for instance as that of peer of France, which in fact is no title, but merely the name of a station, are mere play of vanity and cannot possibly be conducive to a lastingly healthy state of the public. The world has done without mere titles, and it will do so again. Already is no title of nobility conferred upon a French commoner when made peer. Canova, the great sculptor, was made marquis of Ischia. Who knows it? He himself never used the title. But when Frederic the Great ordered the number 66 to be placed in the coat of arms of Major Chazat, whose regiment had taken 66 standards in the battle of Hohenfriedberg, there was more substance in the token. The whole continent of Europe has greatly suffered in consequence of the trifling and unworthy spirit manifesting itself in empty titles, that is, titles of offices without office, or of rank without privilege. They and crosses and orders came into vogue when popular liberty and substantial civism gave way more and more to court politics and court government, and in the same degree as civil liberty shall return to those countries where the abuse exists now, empty titles and unmeaning ribbons will give way, because in popular and national politics the question is respecting the real character which a citizen has been able to found for himself. The Chinese government is also in this respect of much interest to us, because similar causes have produced similar effects. We find there, as in some European continental states, a court government with a thoroughly organized and vast hierarchy of officers, and we find there likewise a variety of merely honorary titles, promotions of rank independent of promotion of offices, and signs of court favor and official distinction, such as the peacock feather, together with presents which seem to correspond to the snuff-boxes with brilliants, frequently given by continental monarchs to favored persons. These marks of distinction, essentially belonging to the epoch of court politics, have already, it would seem, begun to diminish, both in frequency and the estimation in which they are held.

Filippo Strozzi, the distinguished Florentine and opponent to the Medicis, though connected with them by marriage, said, when his fellow-citizens would give him the title of Messire (Mr.): "My name is Filippo Strozzi; I am a Florentine merchant, and whoever gives me a title, offends me." Orders, bestowed by the executive alone, should always be considered as injurious to true liberty; for they give a considerable power founded upon a paltry motive, and may be entirely independent of all that which ought to confer real distinction. The grants of the order of legion of honor by Louis XVIII. furnish a striking instance.

In matters of morality examples are cheering and reassuring. I may be permitted, therefore, to conclude these observations with mentioning the great admiral de Ruiter, as an example of great modesty united to undaunted courage and valor, in which Lord Collingwood was not unlike him. That great naval hero of the United Provinces often said: "I willingly dispense with all praises if I only satisfy my conscience and follow the commands sent me." He would never grant permission to publish from his log books the most important acts of his eventful life. His repeated answer was: "Not I, God has done it." Frequently, when relating some of his remarkable exploits, he would suddenly stop when his son-in-law asked for the date of an event, because he was afraid it would be used for a biography. The king of Spain made him duke, but the patent arrived after his death; his son requested the king to grant him a more modest title. (1)

(1) Brandt, de Ruiter. Van Kampen Hist. of the Netherl. Hamb. 1833.

XLII. Personal affection between particular individuals, whether it grows out of relations of consanguinity, out of the difference of sexes in order to sever the family and to found new ones, or out of a proportional coincidence and disagreement of dispositions, gifts and acquisitions or mutual service, belongs to the primary agents of all human society. Let us consider the last mentioned affection, friendship, first. The ancient philosophers held friendship, to be a subject worthy of their fullest attention. Aristotle treats of it in two books, the eighth and ninth, of his Ethics; Plato, Pythagoras, and after them Cicero, speak of it as one of the most sacred means of cultivating virtue. The poets celebrate this union of souls no less, from Homer, who ends his eighth song with the words: "Not less indeed, than even a brother of the same blood, is an honest friend, kind and judicious in mind," down to the latest. The ancients indeed considered friendship a wedding of the souls, and, not unfrequently, the act of concluding friendship was accompanied by religious consecration. The same intensity and specific character of friendship perhaps, no longer exists; the causes of this fact may be various. Our practical life is more movable, our social intercourse and hence our personal acquaintance is vaster and more changeable, our mind is occupied with a much larger variety of subjects in science as well as literature, our states are wider and our religion points at a moral perfection toward whom all minds are directed as their great example, so that necessarily it would seem the attention to a specific personal relation must be lessened, unless very extraordinary causes are added. The same perhaps would be applicable to our matrimonial relations, which nevertheless are certainly stronger and intenser, generally speaking, than in ancient times, but the reason of this apparent inconsistency seems to lie in the circumstance that the position of woman has risen in the course of civilisation; and the greater importance of the family with us, is of itself one of the causes to account for the phenomenon of which we speak.

Yet, although friendship may not any longer be so often as in antiquity of that fervor and religious intensity with which the ancients considered it, it remains an important element of society, and, like every moral good, ought to be carefully cultivated; the nobler the souls the greater the blessing of friendship. Friendship is a mutual affection, or intensity of feeling toward another, arising from an inmost pleasure in the soul of a good man, which it feels in honoring, admiring, and cherishing what is good, pure or great, and in being honored and cherished by the good and pure, together with the feeling of delight which the soul enjoys at being fully and wholly understood in this world of general misunderstanding or necessary difficulty of mutual comprehension, the thrilling delight of confidence, of mutual repose. There is an essential approach of the souls in friendship as it is in love of the highest sort, or a finding out of one another's essence, stripped of all adhesion, accident or what may arise from different position, nay even sometimes stripped of the difference of opinion; and as we fervently believe that the Creator will develope, in another world, that which was good and pure in each man here beneath, though single and separate, and which led the different individuals in this nether world to different or even opposite opinions, and separated the republican from the monarchist, the rationalist from the