In less rugged and more refined aristocracies there is not so much of the bold bluff honesty of the older aristocrats, but the conditions of the beau-ideal are still of the same type. Montesquieu tells us what was required of the French aristocrat; and Lord Chesterfield* sends that list of virtues and vices to his son, to form himself upon them. The great man must have noble virtues, a frank character, and a polite bearing. Beauty rather than goodness, grandeur rather than justice, striking originality rather than good sense, were required of him in action. For this he might indulge in gaming, drinking, and adultery; he might resort to trickery and deception when united with the idea that his soul was yet lofty, or the affairs he had in hand important. So that the finesses which would have been mean and degrading in private life or for small ends, were admired in the grand and lofty sphere of politics.

Thus men worship in aristocratic ages, and those who fulfil the conditions of their idolatry, however deficient they may be in many of the first requisites of true virtue, can stand upon that altar of hero-worship, and from it command their fellows. And by means of this, aristocratic statesmen, provided only that they possess the qualities necessary to those who would ascend that altar, may acquire their enormous personal power, unaffected by office, unchanged by adversity. The philosopher of the nineteenth century despises these idols and their worshippers, but he worships too in that cavern. His idols are different, dare we hope that they are better?

When the conditions of this worship change, when later generations carry with them other idols to that altar, when this, the simplest avenue of the human soul, is closed, the man who by speech would command the nation must obtain another vantage ground than that from which the old statesmen addressed their audience. The speaker

*Letter cxcvi.
Q

then must have studied deeply the knowledge of men, he must possess a pleasing elocution, a graceful but unstudied action, an elegance of person and of style, an animated countenance, a sonorous and flexible voice, a great command of harmonious expression, a quick imagination, and above all, an earnestness of tone and manner, which is the principal means of transmitting enthusiasm and passion. He must begin with an exordium to gain the affections of his audience; and having by such art obtained something of that favourable standing with them that the old aristocrats possessed without resort to art, he must do more than they were bound to do: he must address the reason of his audience, so as to make them, with apparent spontaneity, come to his conclusion, and be able to say, after they have done it, that they so concluded for such and such reasons; and not let them feel what is, in truth, generally the case that they have been led captive by their passions, aroused and swayed by his oratorical tricks, just as they were formerly overawed by the authority of the old speakers; and that reason has next to nothing to do with their vote.

Thus as personal preeminence declines, oratory increases. Oratory is one of the means by which, in constitutional countries, new men rise to the ranks of statesmen, and the rise of these new men alters the character of the class into which they enter.

CHAP. XII.

THE NATIONAL ACME. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL

ELEMENTS.

"As the most perfect life is that which animates the most complex organisation, so that state is the noblest in which powers, originally and definitely distinct, unite after the varieties of their kind into centres of vitality, one beside the other, to make up a whole."-NIEBUHR.

As in the schools of anatomy, when the knife of the professor lays open, for our instruction, the organism of the human body, we are first enlightened upon the elements of the outward beauty-the skin, the eyes, the hair-and the knife cuts but slightly, and only to show how these and familiar members are connected with, and derive their sustenance and their peculiarities from the inward members, which we never see in life, and it is not till after all this has been explained and understood that the deeper incisions commence, and the vitals are laid bare; so I have endeavoured, seizing upon the foreign glory of nations in their acme, their literature, their oratory, and their forms of statesmanship, which are, as it were, the outward signs and cuticle of national life, to portray and to examine these alone, and only slightly to open the delicate fibres and nerves by which they are connected with the interior organisation; but now the time has arrived when, if ever it can be done, the mainsprings of the life of nations must be probed and exposed. Bear with me, if I do it in a fragmentary and unprenticed way. The

anatomy of the human body is yet far from being completely known, after three thousand years of study. How can the anatomy of the social body be fully understood in the first lecture-room established for its exposition?

Each of the social forces contributes its quota to the greatness of the nation in which it is present, and the measure of national greatness is given by the number of social forces which contribute to it, and the harmony in which they and their gifts unite; if they are all present, and all have their due rank and power in a nation, then is the development of that nation the realisation of the ideal, and a national development is rendered imperfect by the absence or undue prominence of any one or more of these forces. For, suppose any one of them eliminated*, the progress of the other elements would not, as a certain consequence, be stayed, the development would not neces sarily be made to cease; but when the nation comes to the acme, the period in which there is no supremacy among the various elements, and where the greater the number of elements developed the greater the national splendour it is clear that by the deficiency of one or more the general effect is modified.

In a complete development it is necessary that the three secular elements-the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical-should co-exist.

Philosophers of great and merited reputation have taken each of the three cardinal forms of government separately, and assigned to it a principle. There is this difference, says Montesquieu, between the nature of a government and its principle: its nature is that which makes it what it is; its principle, that which regulates its action. The one is its individual structure; the other, the human passions which move it. The same illustrious writer distinguished the principle of republics, meaning thereby both aristocracies and democracies, to be virtue, that is, love and

*The reader may refer to the scheme on p. 96.

regard for the republic; to monarchical government he assigned the principle of honour; and to despotism, fear. Honour is the principle of aristocratic monarchies, because it is the ruling principle of the unconquered founders of nations. It prevails as much among the populations where there has been no conquest, like the Norwegian, as among the conquering tribe which becomes an aristocracy, but it does not prevail among the conquered. Those who live by the rule of honour never commit an act, which the opinion of the men whom they esteem would condemn. If by some happy dispensation the abstract rule of right made itself perceptible to all, and guided opinion, the life of those who live according to the law of honour would exemplify the perfection of human conduct. But the opinions of right among mankind vary continually, and those, therefore, who rule their life by the law of honour, not unfrequently pursue a system of action which calls forth the surprise and the censure of succeeding ages." *

Honour is the effect of deference to the opinion of a class, whom we have previously enshrined in our hearts as the models of feeling and of conduct. I hold it to be a mistake to lay down, as some have done, that it can only exist where there are social equalities, though it is perfectly true that when the aristocratic feelings die out of a nation, the spirit of honour perishes likewise. But honour was a ruling principle among the Scottish Highlanders in their days of predatory warfare, not binding merely on chieftains, but on every clansman; it existed among some of the nobler tribes of the American Indians,

* The philosopher of utility, taking the law of honour as established among the more refined nobilities of Europe in the eighteenth century, expresses his sense of the sins, religious and moral, not thereby chastised. Paley, Moral Philosophy, bk. i. ch. 2. See Coleridge, The Friend, iii. 94; and De Tocqueville, Dém. en Amér., vol. iv. ch. 18. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, Remark (R.) Mandeville, Inquiry into the Origin of Honour.