THE PRINCIPLE OF LOYALTY. 407 



that she would permit him to take off her slipper, and having obtained 

 this favour (a very moderate one from that lady), he constantly carried 

 it about with him between his toga and his tunic, sometimes devoutly 

 kissing it. He paid his court to the all-powerful freedmen of that 

 reign, Narcissus and Pallas, by placing their golden images among his 

 household gods. When Claudius celebrated the secular games, Vitellius, 

 paying his devoirs, gravely wished him many celebrations of the like 

 kind. His " loyalty," though somewhat peculiar, was thought so 

 meritorious, that his remains were honoured by the senate with a public 

 funeral, and his statue was erected before the rostra, with the inscrip- 

 tion, " Of unshaken Piety towards his Prince." The merit of this piety 

 was doubtless estimated at an inverse ratio with that of its object. 



The frequent changes of the imperial line, after the first Caesars, much 

 impaired the spirit of Roman loyalty, though it was apt to revive upon 

 a few instances of lineal succession ; and Domitian, the third emperor 

 of his family, received from Statius, Martial, and other poets, more 

 exquisite adulation than almost any of his predecessors had done. The 

 line of Constantine, also, was treated with a profusion of " loyal incense ;'' 

 the flavour of which was heightened by the gratitude of a religious 

 party, and the flowers of Grecian rhetoric. 



The European Kingdoms which were formed upon the dissolution of 

 the Roman Empire, partook, at various periods, of very different de- 

 grees of the loyal spirit. The " feudal system" was little favourable to 

 it, as it often raised the vassal to a competition with his lord, and ren- 

 dered the duty of allegiance in inferiors obscure and ambiguous. It 

 could not have been active with the Barons of Arragon, when, in swear- 

 ing allegiance to their sovereign, they used the remarkable form "We, 

 who are each of us as good, and who are altogether more powerful, than 

 you, &c." In process of time, however, as crowns acquired strength, 

 and obtained the support of civil and religious establishments, the prin- 

 ciple of loyalty was revived in full vigour, and, up to this day, even with 

 additional authority. It is, in our time heaven be praised fortified by 

 the two great bulwarks of honour and religion : the first inculcated it as 

 a " virtue" characteristic of a gentleman ; the second, as a duty only 

 one degree inferior to the piety towards the Supreme Being. In this 

 country it seems to have attained its height in the reign of Elizabeth, 

 when it was enforced by a sort of chivalrous devotion to a female Sove- 

 reign. " Party" made it also triumphant under Charles II., at the latter 

 end of whose reign, it appears to have laid every other public principle 



