was stronger than now, this effect must have been greater; we shall see that there naturally arose an extensive misuse of all early distinctions.  Hence the facts, that the Jews called Herod a god; that Father, in its higher sense, was a term used among them by servants to masters; that Lord was applicable to any person of worth and power.  Hence, too, the fact that, in the later periods of the Roman Empire, every man saluted his neighbour as Dominus and Rex.

But it is in the titles of the middle ages, and in the growth of our modern ones out of them, that the process is most clearly seen. Herr, Don, Signior, Seigneur, Sennor, were all originally names of rulers—­of feudal lords.  By the complimentary use of these names to all who could, on any pretence, be supposed to merit them, and by successive degradations of them from each step in the descent to a still lower one, they have come to be common forms of address.  At first the phrase in which a serf accosted his despotic chief, mein herr is now familiarly applied in Germany to ordinary people.  The Spanish title Don, once proper to noblemen and gentlemen only, is now accorded to all classes.  So, too, is it with Signior in Italy. Seigneur and Monseigneur, by contraction in Sieur and Monsieur, have produced the term of respect claimed by every Frenchman.  And whether Sire be or be not a like contraction of Signior, it is clear that, as it was borne by sundry of the ancient feudal lords of France, who, as Selden says, “affected rather to bee stiled by the name of Sire than Baron, as Le Sire de Montmorencie, Le Sire de Beauieu, and the like,” and as it has been commonly used to monarchs, our word Sir, which is derived from it, originally meant lord or king.  Thus, too, is it with feminine titles. Lady, which, according to Horne Tooke, means exalted, and was at first given only to the few, is now given to all women of education. Dame, once an honourable name to which, in old books, we find the epithets of “high-born” and “stately” affixed, has now, by repeated widenings of its application, become relatively a term of contempt.  And if we trace the compound of this, ma Dame, through its contractions—­Madam, ma’am, mam, mum, we find that the “Yes’m” of Sally to her mistress is originally equivalent to “Yes, my exalted,” or “Yes, your highness.”  Throughout, therefore, the genesis of words of honour has been the same.  Just as with the Jews and with the Romans, has it been with the modern Europeans.  Tracing these everyday names to their primitive significations of lord and king, and remembering that in aboriginal societies these were applied only to the gods and their descendants, we arrive at the conclusion that our familiar Sir and Monsieur are, in their primary and expanded meanings, terms of adoration.