or the chairman of the Lunar Bank, or the contractor for the Spanish Cortes Railway to-day, and gives him the command of horses, wines, jewels, spectacles, smiles, and the cap and knee of men, what then? It will do the same for Mr. John Cade tomorrow, if Mr. Cade can only dispossess the new-made peer, or the commercial or industrial magnate. Wealth, then, can never be an element of stability in society. It may be a means of luxury, a sign of progress, an outcome of development-a matter many ways desirable. But in its very inmost nature it has something of the brigand and of the pirate. It is a dog that will follow any master; and that will bite the hand of the old one at the bidding of the new. It offers a perpetual challenge, irritation, and cause of hatred-if not to most of those who have it not, yet at all events to a very dangerous proportion of them. A society of which the social grades and orders are actually founded on the possession of wealth, is like an ironclad vessel without stability, and may turn over at any moment, as did the unfortunate Captain, if ever so little sail be set, and ever so little gale arise.

And yet in the euphuism of the Court, the pulpit, the parliament, the Press, and conversation in general, we find society spoken of as consisting of the richer and the poorer classes; in frank admission of the plane in which we consider the element of stability to lie.

The hereditary principle is not an exclusive peculiarity of noble blood. In those ancient and magnificent monarchies which endured for almost as many centuries as any modern dynasty can count tens of years, the hereditary principle ran through society. seems difficult to imagine, if we take note of the latest and best

It

accepted discoveries of the students of the science of wealth, any order of things which could so directly tend to the national welfare and stability. To the division of labour, the great weapon of modern industry, was added a traditional and hereditary culture, the great desideratum of modern science. It is, perhaps, not too much to say, that the stability of institutions, and the possession of the greatest amount of happiness by the greatest number of persons, are the natural results of the hereditary transmission, not only of houses and lands, but of trades, professions, mysteries and callings of all sorts. One class of persons alone numerically shrinks and tends to disappear under such a régime. It is the class to the hereditary maintenance and increase of which, and of which alone, our actual institutions and reforms directly tend-the class which we call paupers, and which contains nearly a twentyfourth part of our population.

The social bond, in a country where the hereditary principle is in vigorous activity, is drawn together by the union of each class in itself. The public order thus consists, not in the congeries of individuals, but in the mutual respect and interdependence of coordinated classes. The mill, under the old régime in France, was as hereditary a possession as the château. The miller might look back to an occupation by his ancestors for five hundred years, under the ancestors of the same seigneur. Proud of his good bourgeoisie, as the seigneur was of his sixteen quarters, there was as little wish to assume the habits, the manners, and the attire of the other class entertained by the lower as by the higher of these distinct strata of society. Thus the constitution of the country,-not using the word as a matter of

theory and of compromise, but as signifying the essential elements of national stability, was rather like that of a solid edifice than of a semi-fluid mass in which every particle is endeavouring to displace every other particle, and what there is of equilibrium is but the resultant of uncounted mutual repulsions.

IV.

Through great part of Europe now exists, in the form of the family name, a survival of the hereditary institutions, which, in France, at least, may be distinctly traced back as far as about eight centuries ago. In the charters, testaments, and other documents that were executed by the nobility of Languedoc when preparing for the first crusade, it is remarkable that surnames are absent. At times a descent for two or three generations may be presumed, from the repetition of a Christian name in the holder of the same castle or lordship; but patronymics, and even territorial designations, arose for the most part in France later than the first crusade. In Rome the gens existed from the earliest times, but the gens seems to have been a more comprehensive group than the modern family. Among the Celtic tribes the gens appears in the form of the clan; descent from some common ancestor being the original bond. With the feudal noblesse territorial possession, involving lordship, representation, and primogeniture, introduced a more fertilising element of national prosperity than could exist under the ruder form of the clan, holding to one common, but distant head. While municipal institutions gradually converted serfs and boors into merchants and citizens, the feudal hereditary institutions filled Europe with an armed, and

to some extent an educated, noblesse, in the place of a horde of savage warriors. Thus order arose from beneath the débris of the devastation and overthrow of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic barbarians.

The family name, as we trace it back to the time of the crusaders, arose under different forms. In some cases a personal designation, or as we call it a nickname, became hereditary, as in the instance of Guillaume Tête d'Estoupes, Duke of Aquitaine. Sometimes a symbol, or badge, chosen by a nobleman, grew into a patronymic; as in the names of Plantagenet or of La Croix. At times a title of honour or dignity became permanent, as Le Sénéschal, in France; Butler, in Ireland; Steward, or Stuart, in Scotland. Still more rarely some Roman or even Gaulish name has been handed down as a patronymic; as in the cases of Polignac, derived from the possession of the site of a temple of Apollo; and of Reignier, a name which appears in Roman history in the form of Brennus, and, later, in that of the virgin and martyr Saint Reine. As old as the introduction of the family designation, whether a true patronymic, or territorial, as more usually denoted by the de, were those colours and arrangement of colours which are as distinctive and hereditary as the name itself. The clans among the Scottish Celts were distinguished, from time immemorial, by a somewhat complex interweaving of colours, special to each sept. Greater simplicity characterised the adoption of those family colours which, as worn over defensive armour, or painted on the shield, received in course of time indifferently the name of the coat-of-arms and of the escutcheon.

In some of the most ancient and noble coats-of-arms a single colour

was borne. The scutcheon was then said to be plein, or full. Such was the case with the arms of the Counts and Dukes of Bretagne, who bore, at least from the time of Jean V., a surcoat and a shield covered with ermine. Such was the case with the scutcheon of the House of Albret, which was called, in heraldic language, gules plein, cr simple red; and was so borne from the time of Amanieu the First, Sire of Albret, whose son went on the first crusade, until it was charged with a silver chain around and across the scutcheon, or as the heralds call it, in cross, in saltire, and in orle, in memory of a great battle.

In other cases the coats or scutcheons were divided: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or in more complicated modes. Thus, the families of Tournemine, of De Vere, and of Astarac, bore their arms divided in four quarters; the first and the fourth, and the second and third, being respectively of the same colours. The House of Asserac, and that of Berenger (like the Clan Campbell, in Scotland) bore a scutcheon divided radially into eight, or, as it is called, gironné, two colours alternately succeeding one another. Other divisions of the shield followed the lines of, or were replaced by, what are called the honourable ordinaries of heraldry. Of these the most important are-(1) the chief, which is a bar, or division, of one-fifth of the width of the scutcheon, occupying the chief, or head, of the shield; (2) the pale, a similar bar occupying the middle of the scutcheon vertically; (3) the fess, a like bar occupying the middle horizontally; (4) the bend, a similar bar drawn diagonally from left to right; (5) the chevron, a bar of like width in the shape of an inverted V; (6) the cross, of which the name denotes the form;

and (7) the saltire, or St. Andrew's

cross.

A remarkable and unexplained feature of heraldry is the fact that these honourable ordinaries, which must be regarded as highly conventionalised symbols, cannot be traced to any gradual origin, but appear when first borne in precisely the form and proportion which they have ever since retained. Thus, the Marquis of Montferrat, of crusading fame, bore a chief gules on a silver shield; the Sire de Melgueil, a sable chief on a silver shield; the House of Vivonne, a chief gules on an ermine shield. A red cross on a gold ground was the original coat-of-arms of Montmorenci, and with the cri "Dieu aide au premier Chrétien" is attributed to the year 497 A.D. In 978 Bouchard de Montmorenci added four blue alérions to the cross, and in 1214 the Constable Matthieu de Montmorenci increased the number to sixteen. A golden saltire on a field gules was borne by Britaut; a golden bend on a field gules by Chalons; a fess gules on a silver shield by Sedan, and the same bearing with the tinctures reversed by Austria; an ermine chevron on a field gules by Ghistille. At times the shield was divided into six, eight, or ten parallel stripes, in the direction of either of the simple ordinaries. Thus the Sires of Couci, Longueval, and Chatillon, bore shields divided in six pieces, alternately of gules and of golden vair, the first barry, or in fess, horizontal; the second in bend, or diagonal; the third vertical, or in pale. The family legend is to the effect that the heads of these three houses were unexpectedly attacked, when bathing, by the Saracens in the Holy Land; that each wrapped his furred velvet mantle round his left arm as a shield, and that they thus successfully defended themselves with their swords.

In com

memoration of the event the three nobles adopted the arms in question. Another crusading incident is said to be recorded by the three alérions, or young eagles, which the imperial House of Lorraine bears on a bend gules, in memory of the shooting of an eagle by the crusading knight of Lorraine in order for a pen to be made from his wing feather for the signature to some military convention. These instances of ancient arms shew that it was not from the representation in the first instance (at least, as far as our records go back), of natural objects (such as shields, or saddles, or swords) that the ordinaries have been gradually modified, but that, like the patronymic or territorial designations which they symbolised, they have been but little changed from their origin so far as can be now ascertained.

the herald, one of the most rigid is honoured in the single breach, as well as in the general observance. The colours of the coats or scutcheons were of three sorts. They were either metals, gold and silver: tinctures, azure, blue; gules, red; sable, black; rarely synople or vert, green; or purpure, purple: or furs, ermine, minever, and vair, the latter being either golden or silver. The one main rule of distribution was, that metal was not to be borne upon metal, tincture upon tincture, or fur upon fur. Thus a red cross on a sable ground would be impossible in heraldry. In cases, however, where a second bearing was added to a charged coat the rule does not apply. Thus the arms of France, azure, semée of fleur-de-lys, or; later, azure, three fleur-de-lys or; were charged, or as it is called

as that of Orleans. It is said that about the time that the assassination of King Henry the Third opened the succession to the crown of France to Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, a flash of lightning struck the stained window of the Chapel of Bourbon Archombaud, and broke out the bend from the scutcheon; leaving unchanged the Royal arms, to which Henry then became entitled.

The exception to this cardinal rule is a remarkable instance of the mode in which, in the crusading times, the study of heraldry assumed a sacred character. Such indeed, from the date of "the tale of Troy divine," has been the function of the herald. He was the messenger of the Gods. His person was sacred in war. His interference was necessary for the rightful proclamation of war, or establishment of peace; for the anointing and coronation of a monarch; for the transmission of a fief; for the establishment of a pedigree; for the registry of the right to bear arms; and for the marshalling of dignities. This special character, clothing the herald, seems to be a survival from the time when kings were regarded either as sharing the divine nature, as in Egypt; or as being the descendants of the Gods, as in Sparta, in Macedon, in Rome itself in pre-Christian times; or in Teutonic derivations from Odin. The mystery of the herald was sacred, and this is probably the reason why the growth and development of the science of blazon have been left unrecorded in writing. The arms of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, the origin of which may with justice be attributed to the date of the founding of that kingdom on the capture of Jerusalem

by Godfrey de Bouillon and the crusaders in 1197, were, a golden cross, potencée, or with crutched ends, between four crosslets, or small plain crosses, all of gold, on a silver shield. And the reason assigned by the heralds for this anomaly, in the case of a kingdom which was held to be more sacred than any other kingdom, was taken from the words of the Psalm which was regarded by the host of Godfrey as a special prophecy of their recovery of the Holy City from the Paynim.

"Rex virtutum dilecti dilecti,

Et speciei domus diudere spolia
Si dormiatis inter medios cleros
Pennæ columbæ deargentatæ, et
posteriora dorsi ejus in pallore
auri."*

Faith, justice, and constancy, purity, truth, and hope; were the qualities symbolised by this unique juxta-position of the metals of the herald; or rather, to use the terms of blazon special to kings, of this conjunction of Sol and Luna.

It is impossible to read the old accounts of some of the crusading arms without becoming convinced that, unless the writers drew exclusively on their imagination, the law and order of blazon had been long established by the close of the eleventh century. Thus, the arms assumed by the Sires de Courcy, as before mentioned, were adopted instead of the bearing "gules, a bend accompanied by two cottices, or -arms as thoroughly conventional as it would be possible to design. The three alérions of the House of Lorraine are charged on the bend, and thus intimate the greater antiquity of the use of that honourable ordinary. The arms of the kings of Austrasia, of Soissons, and of Orleans, of the first race of French kings, those of