another; all the power he enjoyed
emanated from himself alone. What a feeling of individual
consequence must such a situation have inspired--what pride, what
insolence, must it have engendered in his mind! Above him was no
superior, of whose orders he was to be the mere interpreter or
organ--around him were no equals. No all-powerful municipality
made his wishes bend to its own--no superior authority exercised
a control over his wishes, he knew no bridle on his inclinations,
but the limits of his power, or the presence of danger.

"Another consequence, hitherto not sufficiently attended to, but
of vast importance, flowed from this society.

"The patriarchal society, of which the Bible and the Oriental
monuments offer the model, was the first combination of men. The
chief of a tribe lived with his children, his relations, the
different generations who have assembled around him. This was the
situation of Abraham--of the patriarchs: it is still that of the
Arab tribes which perpetuate their manners. The _clan_, of which
remains still exist in the mountains of Scotland, and the _sept_
of Ireland, is a modification of the patriarchal society: it is
the family of the chief, expanded during a succession of
generations, and forming a little aggregation of dependents,
still influenced by the same attachments, and subjected to the
same authority. But the feudal community was very different.
Allied at first to the clan, it was yet in many essential
particulars dissimilar. There did not exist between its members
the bond of relationship; they were not of the same blood; they
often did not speak the same language. The feudal lord belonged
to a foreign and conquering, his serfs to a domestic and
vanquished race. Their employments were as various as their
feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle, with
his wife, his children, and relations: the serfs on the estate,
of a different race, of different names, toiled in the cottages
around. This difference was prodigious--it exercised a most
powerful effect on the domestic habits of modern Europe. It
engendered the attachments of home: it brought women into their
proper sphere in domestic life. The little society of freemen,
who lived in the midst of an alien race in the castle, were all