We shall find these conclusions confirmed if we examine the powers and duties of an English monarch at the break-up of an administration.  But the power of dissolution and the prerogative of creating peers, the cardinal powers of that moment are too important and involve too many complex matters to be sufficiently treated at the very end of a paper as long as this.

No.  IV.  The house of lords.

In my last essay I showed that it was possible for a constitutional monarch to be, when occasion served, of first-rate use both at the outset and during the continuance of an administration; but that in matter of fact it was not likely that he would be useful.  The requisite ideas, habits, and faculties, far surpass the usual competence of an average man, educated in the common manner of sovereigns.  The same arguments are entirely applicable at the close of an administration.  But at that conjuncture the two most singular prerogatives of an English king—­the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons—­come into play; and we cannot duly criticise the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and what the House of Commons is.

The use of the House of Lords or, rather, of the Lords, in its dignified capacity—­is very great.  It does not attract so much reverence as the Queen, but it attracts very much.  The office of an order of nobility is to impose on the common people—­not necessarily to impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there.  The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol.  Nobility is the symbol of mind.  It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it.  A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the “old squire” will get reverence.  Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him.  The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man’s sense.  An old lord will get infinite respect.  His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate nor perceive any other.

The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents.  It prevents the rule of wealth—­ the religion of gold.  This is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon.  He is always trying to make money; he reckons everything in coin; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he passes a little heap.  He has a “natural instinctive admiration