AND PORTO SANTO. 3 



of gold in the palaces of the provinces, have been ignorant of 

 every volume they possessed beyond their genealogies. At the 

 present moment, however, even these men are disposed to oblige 

 those who are occupied in useful research ; not from any generous 

 interest in it, but because they feel themselves just now entirely 

 ecUpsed in pubhc life, and therefore endeavour to appear Uberal 

 in private, not only in exoneration of themselves, but out of oppo- 

 sition to the constitutionalists. 



Not a few, perhaps, of the more enlightened nobility would be 

 disposed to join the better cause, in the hope of gradually in- 

 ducing a government more worthy of that cause, were it not for 

 the coarseness of manner, vulgarity of language, slovenly habits, 

 and contempt of refinement, whether intellectual or physical, 

 which, though felt by few, has been affected by many of the liberal 

 party, with the short-sighted and unworthy view of pleasing the 

 lower order of their constituents ; who, instead of being attached 

 by it, have shrewdly enough construed it into a discovery, that the 

 differences between themselves and their deputies were purely 

 imaginary, and that they might just as well elect one of their own 

 class. If the constitutionalists consider the nobility as an un- 

 natural aristocracy, supported by accident and court favour, and 

 not by superior achievement, virtue, and intelhgence, — an aristo- 

 cracy, which had monopoHsed all the places of profit, yet almost 

 always remained debtors to the revenue for their unfair proportion 

 of those arbitrary taxes which were squeezed, without abatement 

 out of the hard earnings of the labourer : if they could not help 

 feehng this, they should at least wish the educated gentleman to 

 preserve that sort of dignity, to give that evidence of his supe- 

 riority, which would warrant the lower class to look up to him 

 with confidence and expectation, and to protect his privileges from 

 attack or intrusion on the part of the more worthless of their own 

 body; as they would do, were it once made manifest that the 



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