peculiar to the English of to-day as to the old Romans, only that the latter were more land-rats than water-rats; but in the unamiableness, in which both attained the utmost height, they are perfectly equal and alike. The most striking elective affinity is to be observed between the nobility of both races.[1] The English nobleman, like the same character of yore in Rome, is patriotic; love for his native land keeps him, in spite of all political-legal differences, intimately allied to the plebeian, and this sympathetic bond so brings it about that the English aristocrats and democrats, like the Romans before them, form one and an united race. In other countries where nobility is bound, less to the land than to the person of him who is their prince, or are devoted to the peculiar interests of their class, this is not the case. Then again we find among the English, as once among the Roman nobles, a striving towards established authority as the highest, most glorious, and also indirectly the most profitable—I say indirectly the most profitable, because, as once in Rome, so now in England, the management of the highest offices under government are made profitable only by misuse of influence and
- ↑ These are true comparisons on the whole. Many years ago I remarked the astonishing likeness between many busts of old Romans of the better class and certain modern Englishmen.—Translator.
