dies submit in having their feet
crushed. In India, and indeed throughout the East, there exists a like
connection between the pitiless tyranny of rulers, the dread terrors of
immemorial creeds, and the rigid restraint of unchangeable customs: the
caste regulations continue still unalterable; the fashions of clothes
and furniture have remained the same for ages; suttees are so ancient as
to be mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus; justice is still
administered at the palace-gates as of old; in short, "every usage is a
precept of religion and a maxim of jurisprudence."

A similar relationship of phenomena was exhibited in Europe during the
Middle Ages. While all its governments were autocratic, while feudalism
held sway, while the Church was unshorn of its power, while the criminal
code was full of horrors and the hell of the popular creed full of
terrors, the rules of behaviour were both more numerous and more
carefully conformed to than now. Differences of dress marked divisions
of rank. Men were limited by law to a certain width of shoe-toes; and no
one below a specified degree might wear a cloak less than so many inches
long. The symbols on banners and shields were carefully attended to.
Heraldry was an important branch of knowledge. Precedence was strictly
insisted on. And those various salutes of which we now use the
abridgments were gone through in full. Even during our own last century,
with its corrupt House of Commons and little-curbed monarchs, we may
mark a correspondence of social formalities. Gentlemen were still
distinguished from lower classes by dress; people sacrificed themselves
to inconvenient requirements--as powder, hooped petticoats, and towering
head-dresses; and children addressed their parents as _Sir_ and
_Madam_.

A further corollary naturally following this last, and almost, indeed,
forming part of it, is, that these several kinds of government decrease
in stringency at the same rate. Simultaneously with the decline in the
influence of priesthoods, and in the fear of eternal
torments--simultaneously with the mitigation of political tyranny, the
growth of popular power, and the amelioration of criminal codes; has
taken place that diminution of formalities and that fading of
distinctive marks, now so observable. Looking at home, we may note that
there is less attention to precedence than there used to be. No one in
our day ends an interview with the phrase "your humble servant." The
emplo