forward at foreign courts only in thee character of a military officer.  At some courts this is carried so far, that no man can be presented out of uniform.  Has the military profession, on the other hand, benefited by such partiality?  So far from it, that, were the continental armies liable to that sort of surveillance which our own Horse Guards exercises over the social morals of the officers, we do not believe that one of those armies could exist for five years.  The facts placed beyond denial by the capture of foreign officers’ baggage, by the violated parole of honour, and by many other incidents of the late war, combine to prove the low tone of gentlemanly honour and probity in the ill-paid armies of the Continent.

Our purpose has been, to insist on the capital patriotic uses to which so splendid an aristocracy as ours has been applied, and will be applied, so long as it is suffered to exist undisturbed by the growing democracy (and, worse than that, by the anarchy) of the times.  These uses are principally four, which we shall but indicate in a few words.

First, it is in the nobility of Great Britain that the Conservative principle—­which cannot but be a momentous agency wheresoever there is any thing good to protect from violence, or any thing venerable to uphold in sanctity—­is chiefly lodged.  Primogeniture and the church are the two corner-stones upon which our civil constitution ultimately reposes; and neither of these, from the monumental character of our noble houses, held together through centuries by the peculiar settlements of their landed properties, has any power to survive the destruction of a distinct patrician order.

Secondly, though not per se, or, in a professional sense, military as a body, (Heaven forbid that they should be so!) yet, as always furnishing a disproportionate number from their order to the martial service of the country, they diffuse a standard of high honour through our army and navy, which would languish in a degree not suspected whenever a democratic influence should thoroughly pervade either.  It is less for what they do in this way, than for what they prevent, that our gratitude is due to the nobility.  However, even the positive services of the nobility are greater in this field than a democrat is aware of.  Are not all our satirical novels, &c., daily describing it as the infirmity of English society, that so much stress is laid upon aristocratic connexions?  Be it so:  but do not run away from your own doctrine, O democrat! as soon as the consequences become startling.  One of these consequences, which cannot be refused, is the depth of influence and the extent of influence which waits upon the example of our nobles.  Were the present number of our professional nobles decimated, they would still retain a most salutary influence.  We have spoken sufficiently of the ruin which follows where a nation has no natural and authentic leaders for her armies.  And we venture to add our suspicion—­that even France, at this moment, owes much of the courage which marks her gentry, though a mere wreck from her old aristocracy, to the chivalrous feeling inherited from her ancestral remembrances.  Good officers are not made such by simple constitutional courage; honour, and something of a pure gentlemanly temper, must be added.