People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.
A degenerate nobleman, or one that is proud of his birth, is like a- turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred.
Odiosum est enim, cum a prsetereuntibus dicatur?—O domus antiqua, heu, quam dispari dominare domino.
It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one."
I came up-stairs into the world; for I was born in a cellar.
D'Adam nous sommes tous enfants,
La prouve en est connue,
Et que tous, nos premier parents
Ont mené la charrue.
Mais, las de cultiver enfin
La terre labourée,
L'une a dételé' le matin,
L'autre l'après-dinée.
Great families of yesterday we show,
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who.
Born in a Cellar, * * * and living in a Garret.
Primus Adam duro cum verteret arva ligone,
Pensaque de vili deceret Eva colo:
Ecquis in hoc poterat vir nobilis orbe videri?
Et modo quisquam alios ante locandus erir?
Say, when the ground our father Adam till'd,
And mother Eve the humble distaff held,
Who then his pedigree presumed to trace,
Or challenged the prerogative of place?
No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations.
Few sons attain the praise of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace.
Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis;
Est in juvencis, est in equibus patrum
Virtus; nee imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilae columbam.
The brave are born from the brave and good. In steers and in horses is to be found the excellence of their sires; nor do savage eagles produce a peaceful dove.
"My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."
Ah, ma foi, je n'en sais rien; moi je suis mon ancetre.
Faith, I know nothing about it; I am my own ancestor.
Stemmata quid faciunt, quid prodest, Pontice, longo,
Sanguine censeri pictosque ostendere vultus.
Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus?
Sence I've ben here, I've hired a chap to look about for me
To git me a transplantable an' thrifty fem'lytree.
Sire, I am my own Rudolph of Hapsburg.
(Rudolph teas the founder of the Hapsburg family.)
