DECLINE OF CEREMONIAL INFLUENCE. 89 



names which confess inferiority and submission ; is the sama 

 feeling which resists despotic power and inaugurates popu 

 lar government, denies the authority of the Church anc 

 establishes the right of private judgment. 



A fourth fact, akin to the foregoing, is, that these sev 

 eral kinds of government not only decline together, hut 

 corrupt together. By the same process that a Court of 

 Chancery becomes n place not for the administration of 

 justice, but for the withholding of it by the same process 

 that a national church, from being an agency for moral con 

 trol, comes to be merely a thing of formulas and tithes and 

 bishoprics by this same process do titles and ceremonies 

 that once had a meaning and a power become empty forms, 



Coats of arms which served to distinguish men in bat 

 tle, now figure on the carriage panels of retired grocers. 

 Once a badge of high military rank, the shoulder-knot has 

 become, on the modern footman, a mark of servitude. 

 The name Banneret, which once marked a partially-created 

 Baron a Baron who had passed his military &quot; little go &quot; 

 is now, under the modification of Baronet, applicable to 

 any one favoured by wealth or interest or party feeling. 

 Knighthood has so far ceased to be an honour, that men 

 now honour themselves by declining it. The military dig 

 nity Escuycr has, in the modern Esquire, become a wholly 

 unmilitary affix. Not only do titles, and phrases, and sa 

 lutes cease to fulfil their original functions, but the whole 

 apparatus of social forms tends to become useless for it3 

 original purpose the facilitation of social intercourse. 

 Those most learned in ceremonies, and most precise in the 

 observance of them, arc not always the best behaved ; as 

 those deepest read in creeds and scriptures are not there 

 fore the most religious ; nor those who have the clearest 

 notions of legality and illegality, the most honest. Just 

 as lawyers are of all men the least noted for probity ; as 

 cathedral towns have a lower moral character than most 



