TITLES. 



which the victor and his descendants derived a permanent surname 

 from the victories they had won. . . . The example set by the higher 

 was followed by the humbler classes.&quot; 



And under influences of this kind, dominus and rex even 

 tually became titles used to ordinary persons. Nor do mod 

 ern European nations fail to exemplify the process. The 

 prevalence of names of rank on the continent, often re 

 marked, reaches in some places great extremes. &quot; In Meck 

 lenburg,&quot; says Captain Spencer, &quot; it is computed that the 

 nobility include one half of the population. ... At one 

 of the inns I found a Heir Graf [Count] for a landlord, 

 a Frau Grafinn [Countess] for a landlady, the young Her- 

 ren Gr afen filled the places of ostler, waiter, and boots, 

 while the fair young Fraulein Grafinnen w r ere the cooks and 

 chambermaids. I was informed that in one village . . . 

 the whole of the inhabitants were noble except four.&quot; 



French history shows us more clearly perhaps than any 

 other, the stages of diffusion. Xoting that in early days, 

 while madame was the title for a noble lady, mademoiselle 

 was used to the wife of an advocate or physician; and that 

 w r hen, in the sixteenth century, madame descended to the 

 married women of these middle ranks, mademoiselle 

 descended from them to the unmarried women; let us look 

 more especially at the masculine titles, sire, seigneur, sieur, 

 and monsieur. Setting out with sire as an early title for a 

 feudal noble, we find, from a remark of Montaigne, that in 

 1580, though still applicable in a higher sense to the king, 

 it had descended to the vulgar, and was not used for inter 

 mediate grades. Seigneur, introduced as a feudal title while 

 sire was losing its meaning by diffusion, and for a period 

 used alternatively with it, became, in course of time, con 

 tracted into sieur. By and by sieur also began to spread 

 to those of lower rank. Afterwards, re-establishing a dis 

 tinction by an emphasizing prefix, there came into use mon 

 sieur; which, as applied to great seigneurs, was new in 

 1321, and which came also to be the title of sons of kings 



