yment of the word _Sir_, once general in social intercourse, is at
present considered bad breeding; and on the occasions calling for them,
it is held vulgar to use the words "Your Majesty," or "Your Royal
Highness," more than once in a conversation. People no longer formally
drink each other's healths; and even the taking wine with each other at
dinner has ceased to be fashionable. The taking-off of hats between
gentlemen has been gradually falling into disuse. Even when the hat is
removed, it is no longer swept out at arm's length, but is simply
lifted. Hence the remark made upon us by foreigners, that we take off
our hats less than any other nation in Europe--a remark that should be
coupled with the other, that we are the freest nation in Europe.

As already implied, this association of facts is not accidental. These
titles of address and modes of salutation, bearing about them, as they
all do, something of that servility which marks their origin, become
distasteful in proportion as men become more independent themselves, and
sympathise more with the independence of others. The feeling which makes
the modern gentleman tell the labourer standing bareheaded before him to
put on his hat--the feeling which gives us a dislike to those who cringe
and fawn--the feeling which makes us alike assert our own dignity and
respect that of others--the feeling which thus leads us more and more to
discountenance all forms and names which confess inferiority and
submission; is the same feeling which resists despotic power and
inaugurates popular government, denies the authority of the Church and
establishes the right of private judgment.

A fourth fact, akin to the foregoing, is, that these several kinds of
government not only decline together, but corrupt together. By the same
process that a Court of Chancery becomes a 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 control,
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 battle, 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