virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
--La Byuyere.]

'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;
of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of our
kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was
a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
to birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A young man unknown,
coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man
lately dead: "Friend," said he, "in such preferments as these, I have not
so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess."
And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings
of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always
succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before
the most experienced in the trade. They of Calicut make of nobles a sort
of superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike
employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as
many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and
irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than
themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched
one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously
interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too
near them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk,
like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of
jostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they
please: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy,
those certain death. No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or
virtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to
which this custom contri