ew men of
original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most
departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working
men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed,
conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same
given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you
to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say,
that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote
themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its
pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the
responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think
they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of
birth and fortune--who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less
prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they
feel, with the poet:

"At heros, et decus, et quae non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco."

It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that
the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at
twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this
undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man
in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast
ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.

This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling
themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the
natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one
way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent
in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter
the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by
virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they
must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest
and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy
responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the
burden of responsible power.

One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in
public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of
the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the
aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed,
is yet oftener best