a piece of
ribbon, more or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it.
The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and
all-colored; and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would
naturally have preferred to restore their good old orders of Saint
Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel; but France had taken the ribbon
of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared
to pluck it thence.

In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed rather to
pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses tinsel gewgaws,
foolish foreign ornaments, and so forth. It is known how the Great
Duke (the breast of whose own coat was plastered with some half-hundred
decorations) was averse to the wearing of ribbons, medals, clasps,
and the like, by his army. We have all of us read how uncommonly
distinguished Lord Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he was the only
gentleman present without any decoration whatever. And the Great Duke's
theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good
and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of his
distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who might naturally
claim to wear a band of garter blue across their waistcoats; but that
for common people your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was the
most sensible wear.

And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comfortable; we can
walk and dine as well; we can keep the winter's cold out as well,
without a star on our coats, as without a feather in our hats. How often
we have laughed at the absurd mania of the Americans for dubbing their
senators, members of Congress, and States' representatives, Honorable.
We have a right to call OUR Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our
Lords' sons Honorable, and so forth; but for a nation as numerous, well
educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to give its
distinguished citizens titles of honor--monstrous assumption of low-bred
arrogance and parvenu vanity! Our titles are respectable, but theirs
absurd. Mr. Jones, of London, a Chancellor's son, and a tailor's
grandson, is justly Honorable, and entitled to be Lord Jones at his
noble father's decease: but Mr. Brown, the senator from New York, is a
silly upstart for tacking Honorable to his name, and our sturdy British
good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at
Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honorable