came the heir, who was brought up with a view to his exercising
the same powers in his turn. After him, but far behind him in
importance, if he promised to be strong, came the other sons, who, if
they took wives at all, were expected to marry heiresses, and one of
whom, almost as a matter of course, was brought up to be a churchman.
The rest, if there were any, generally followed the career of arms, and
remained unmarried; for heiresses of noble birth were few, and their
guardians married them to eldest sons of great houses whenever possible,
while the strength of caste prejudice made alliances of nobles with the
daughters of rich plebeians extremely unusual.

It is possible to trace the daily life of a Roman family in the Middle
Age from its regular routine of today, as out of what anyone may see in
Italy the habits of the ancients can be reconstructed with more than
approximate exactness. And yet it is out of the question to fix the
period of the general transformation which ultimately turned the Rome of
the Barons into the Rome of Napoleon's time, and converted the
high-handed men of Sciarra Colonna's age into the effeminate fops of
1800, when a gentleman of noble lineage, having received a box on the
ear from another at high noon in the Corso, willingly followed the
advice of his confessor, who counselled him to bear the affront with
Christian meekness and present his other cheek to the smiter. Customs
have remained, fashions have altogether changed; the outward forms of
early living have survived, the spirit of life is quite another; and
though some families still follow the patriarchal mode of existence, the
patriarchs are gone, the law no longer lends itself to support household
tyranny, and the subdivision of estates under the Napoleonic code is
guiding an already existing democracy to the untried issue of a
problematic socialism. Without attempting to establish a comparison upon
the basis of a single cause, where so many are at work, it is
permissible to note that while in England and Germany a more or less
voluntary system of primogeniture is admitted and largely followed from
choice, and while in the United States men are almost everywhere
entirely free to dispose of their property as they please, and while the
population and wealth of those countries are rapidly increasing, France,
enforcing the division of estates among children, though she is
accumulating riches, is faced by the terrible fact of a steadily