G RANDEE GRANITE. 



519 



relatives of the royal house, and partly of such mem- 

 bers of the high feudal nobility, distinguished for 

 their wealth, as had, by the grant of a banner, re- 

 ceived from the king the right to enlist soldiers, 

 under their own colours, and had thus acquired pre- 

 cedence of the other ricos hombres, which distinction 

 regularly descended to their posterity. As ricos 

 hombres, they partook of all the privileges of the 

 high nobility : as such, they possessed certain feudal 

 tenures (called royal fiefs or lordships], in considera- 

 tion of which they were bound to serve the king with 

 a proportionate number of lances (each of which 

 consisted of a horseman with four or five armed at- 

 tendants); these fiefs they could be deprived of only 

 in certain cases determined by law. They were free 

 from taxes, on account of serving the king with their 

 property and persons in war. They could not be 

 subjected to the jurisdiction of any civil or criminal 

 judges, without the special commission of the king. 

 They might, at any time, during the anarchy of the 

 middle ages, leave the kingdom, together with their 

 vassals, without hinderance, and withdraw them- 

 selves from the laws and feudal service of their 

 country, and join another prince, even against their 

 former sovereign, without being considered traitors 

 on that account. Besides these general prerogatives 

 of the higher nobility, and the priority of claim to the 

 highest offices of state, the grandees possessed some 

 peculiar distinctions. Such, in particular, was the 

 right of covering the head in the presence of the 

 king, with his permission, on all public occasions 

 an ancient privilege among the Spaniards, which had 

 its origin in the spirit of a limited feudal monarchy : 

 this, however, was conceded also to the (so called) 

 titulos (titled personages, viz., dukes and counts). 

 The king called each of them " my cousin " (mi pri- 

 tno], while he addressed the other members of the 

 high nobility only as " my kinsman " (mi pariente). 

 In the cortes, they sat immediately after the prelates, 

 before the titulos. They had free entrance into the 

 palace and apartments of the king, and, on festival 

 occasions, sat in the royal chapel near the altar. 

 Their wives participated in the external marks of 

 respect belonging to the rank of their husbands : the 

 queen rose up from her seat to receive them, and 

 cushions were laid for them upon an elevated settee 

 (estruda). After Ferdinand and Isabella, guided and 

 assisted by the able Ximenes, crushed the power of 

 the feudal nobility, the privileges of the liigher 

 nobility were diminished ; and, at the close of the 

 fifteenth century, the name of the ricos hombres was 

 lost, together with their privileges. Though Fer- 

 dinand's successor, Charles V., was little inclined to 

 give up the struggle for unlimited power, he never- 

 theless found many inducements to attach some of 

 the principal men of the kingdom to himself, and to 

 reward others for the important services which they 

 had rendered him in the suppression of the insurrec- 

 tion of the commons. The rank which ancient cus- 

 tom had fixed in the respect of the people, he distin- 

 guished by the name of grandezza, ami raised to be 

 a particular order of nobility, the prerogatives of 

 which consisted mostly in external marks of distinc- 

 tion. Thus he avoided reviving the power possessed 

 by the feudal nobility in early ages, and completed 

 what had been begun under Ferdinand and Isabella, 

 by making of an independent feudal nobility a de- 

 pendent order of court nobles. There were three j 

 classes of grandees. Some the king commanded to 

 be covered before they spoke to him : these were 

 grandees of the first class. Others received the com- 

 mand as soon as they had spoken, and so heard his 

 answer with their heads covered : these were gran- 1 

 dees of the second class. Others again did not re- j 



ceive the king's command to be covered until after 

 he had answered them : these were grandees of the 

 third class. Latterly, it is true, these distinctions of 

 rank became antiquated ; but there were still three 

 classes of grandees, although without any essential 

 differences. They all enjoyed, up to the time of the 

 last revolution, besides the above-mentioned privile- 

 ges, that of being called excellency, and that of hav- 

 ing a stamp given with the foot, when they entered 

 the royal palace through tiie hall of the guards, by 

 way of notice to the sentinel to present arms to them. 

 They had no other marks of distinction from the rest 

 of the high nobility. They did not constitute a par- 

 ticular society, as did formerly the dukes and peers 

 in France; and no high offices were exclusively, ap- 

 propriated to them, except, perhaps, the mastership 

 of the horse, the lord-chamberlainship, and the cap. 

 taincy of the halberdier guard, might be so consider- 

 ed. In truth, the royal will was not subjected to any 

 limits in the nomination even to these court-offices. 



GRANITE is considered as the foundation rock of 

 the globe, or that upon which all secondary rocks 

 repose. From its great relative depth, it is not often 

 met with, except in Alpine situations, where it pre- 

 sents the appearance of having broken through the 

 more superficial strata of the earth, the beds of other 

 rocks in the vicinity rising towards it at increasing 

 angles of elevation as they approach it. It is com- 

 posed of three minerals, via., quartz, feldspar, and 

 mica, which are more or less perfectly crystallized 

 and closely united together. They vary considerably 

 in the relative proportions in which they exist, in the 

 granites of different localities, as also in the size of 

 the grains ; but feldspar is usually the predominating 

 ingredient. Granite has been divided into several 

 subspecies, or varieties ; of these, the following are 

 the most important : Common granite, in which the 

 three ordinary constituents above mentioned occur 

 in nearly equal proportions ; the feldspar may be 

 white, red or gray. Porphyritic granite, in which 

 large crystals of feldspar are disseminated through a 

 common granite, whose ingredients are fine-grained. 

 Graphic granite, which consists of feldspar in broad 

 laminae, penetrated, perpendicularly with long, im- 

 perfect crystals of quartz, whose transverse angular 

 sections bear some resemblance to certain letters, 

 especially to those of Oriental languages. Sienite or 

 sienitic granite, in which hornblende, either wholly 

 or in part, supplies the place of mica. Talcky or 

 chloride granite (the protogine of the French), in 

 which talc or chlorite takes the place of the mica. 

 Feldspathic granite (the white-stone of Werner, and 

 the eurite of the French), in which feldspar is the 

 principal ingredient. 



Granite occurs in masses of vast thickness, which 

 are commonly divided, by fissures, into blocks that 

 approach to rhomboidal or tolerably regular polyhed- 

 ral forms. In some instances, however, it affects a 

 laminated structure, owing to the preponderance of 

 mica, and its arrangement in layers. When this is 

 the case, it passes into the rock called gneiss, (q. v.) 

 The aspect of granitic mountains is extremely diverse, 

 depending, in part, upon the nature of its stratifica- 

 tion, and the degree of disintegration it lias under- 

 gone. Where the beds are nearly horizontal, or 

 where the granite, from the preponderance of feld- 

 spar, is soft and disintegrating, the summits are 

 rounded and heavy. Where hard and soft granite 

 are intermixed, in the same mountain, the softer 

 granite is disintegrated, and falls away, leaving the 

 harder blocks and masses piled in confusion upon each 

 other, like an immense mass of ruins. Where it is 

 hard, and the beds are nearly vertical, it forms lofty 

 pyramidal peaks or aiguilles, like the Aiguille do 



