traditional exactions, that is to say, indirectly. Those offices are the aim of youthful education in the great families of England, just as they were among the Romans, and with the one as with the other, skill in war and oratory avail as the means to future position. So among the English, as it was among the Romans, the tradition of reigning and of administration is the hereditary endowment of noble families, and through this it may be that the English Tories will long be indispensable—yes, and so long in power as were the senatorial families of old Rome.
But nothing under present circumstances in England is so resemblant as the "soliciting suffrages," as we see it depicted in Coriolanus. With what bitter and restrained sourness, with what scornful irony, does the Roman Tory beg for the votes of the good citizens whom he so deeply despises in his soul, and whose approbation is to him so absolutely necessary that he may become consul. There being, however, this difference—that most English lords have got their wounds, not in battle but in fox-hunting, and being better trained by their mothers in the art of dissimilation, do not when electioneering manifest their ill-temper and scorn as did the stubborn Coriolanus.
As in all things, Shakespeare has exercised in
