ART. V.-THE OLD ENGLISH NOBILITY.

The Historic Peerage of England; exhibiting, under alphabetical arrangement, the Origin, Descent, and Present State of every Title of Peerage which has existed in this Country since the Conquest: being a new edition of the "Synopsis of the Peerage of England" by the late Sir Harris Nicolas, G.C.M.G.; revised, corrected, and continued to the present time, &c. by William Courthope, Esq., Somerset Herald, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-law. Murray, 1857. A History of England under the Norman Kings, or from the Battle of Hastings to the Accession of the House of Plantagenet; to which is prefixed an Epitome of the early History of Normandy. Translated from the German of Dr. J. M. Lappenberg, For. F.S.A., Keeper of the Archives of the City of Hamburg, by Benjamin Thorpe; with considerable additions and corrections by the Translator. Oxford, 1857.

English Historical Society's Publications. 29 vols. Lond. 1838-56. General Introduction to Domesday Book; accompanied by Indexes of the Tenants-in-Chief and Under-Tenants at the time of the Survey, as well as of the Holders of Lands mentioned in Domesday anterior to the formation of that Record, &c. By Sir Henry Ellis. 2 vols. 1833.

HAZLITT, in one of his essays, speaks of " Mayfair" as "the beauideal of civilised life, a society composed entirely of lords and footmen." How far the lapse of a quarter of a century may have modified this curious topographical feature, we will not now stop to inquire: it seems, however, as if the spirit of the remark still holds good with respect to a certain class of literature, that devoted to recording the pedigrees and family biography of the British aristocracy. We have no wish to raise an indiscriminate and useless outcry against the compilers and editors of our modern "Peerages." They themselves are not so much to blame as others for the result which has assigned to their productions, as their most useful position, a place by the side of the visiting-book in the entrance-halls of our great WestEnd houses, instead of on the library-tables of historical students. They themselves are to blame in a very secondary degree for the peculiarities and deficiencies which have rendered their works a more congenial and instructive study for fashionable footmen and hall-porters, whose acquaintance with peers lies within the compass of the gossip of the last few town seasons, than for those who have been accustomed to look at the representatives of our great families with reference to the past national history in which the origin of their dignities is recorded. It is not so much their fault that their matter has seldom risen above the appreciation of such an audience, as it is the fault of those who

have allowed a mere court-directory to supersede a concise abstract of the relations of our noble families to the great events of which they were the contemporary spectators, and in so many cases the moving agents. We have heard a great deal in recent years of histories of the "people" being essential to a due comprehension of the events of the past centuries; but, without denying a certain justice in the claim thus put forward, a similar one may be urged with far greater force on behalf of the ancient nobility of England. "Popular" influence in national affairs, in the sense in which the term is employed by those who identify themselves peculiarly with that cause, is of very modern growth. The old history of England, from the Conquest to the accession of the House of Tudor, is unequivocally the history of the baronial families, just as the Tudor and Stuart periods are chiefly the property of the court and middle classes. The "Barons of Runnymead" is a commonplace expression among constitutional orators; but how many of the audience, leaving the speaker himself out of the question, are acquainted with the bare names of those to whom they are so fond of acknowledging themselves as thus deeply indebted? Our great kings have all had more or less justice or injustice done to their actions, and every one with the commonest smattering of education has some general notion of their character and fate. Our middle-class Hampdens and Cromwells have found their enthusiastic biographers and their sturdy detractors in the literature of the nineteenth century; but the personal history of our old noble families, intertwined at every step with the history of their country, is left buried in the comparative obscurity of monkish chronicles, without any attempt being made to bring together these scattered notices, and to group them around the central points of English history, so that an allusion to each of the great eras of our national progress may suggest at once to the mind the name, character, and career of some one or more of the old peers of England. This has been done, though disconnectedly, for the remarkable men of the centuries subsequent to the accession of Henry VII. But who is there among general readers that recalls in all the preceding period more baronial names of eminence than some three or four, such as Simon de Montfort, the guilty Mortimer, and the king-making Warwick? How many noble soldiers and statesmen, who have played almost, if not quite, as important a part in the events of those days, have failed to secure even so simple a tribute to their fame as the bare recollection of their names by those who have enjoyed the fruits of their labours? There may be some vague conviction that the De Clares and De Veres did something remarkable in former ages to render their names

peculiarly grateful to the ear above other names, and the cherished" property" of writers of romantic fictions; but how many are there who attach any personal ideas to a particular De Clare or De Vere, or even can tell when those families arose and when they became extinct? The volumes of the English Historical Society, and the new series now in course of publication under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, will leave no excuse to more serious students for the continued neglect of this field of illustration; and as the enterprise of Mr. Bohn has already given the public the opportunity of becoming acquainted with some of the authorities for our earlier history in a popular form, it is surely not too much to hope that the information thus rendered generally accessible, and the tastes thus created and fostered, may ere long lead to the production, and secure a market for a remunerative sale of an English peerage-book worthy of taking its place on our shelves by the side of our Hallams and Macaulays. As it is, the taint of servile complaisance to the pretensions and self-delusions of the fashionable powers that be is so connected in the public mind with the idea of a peerage-book, there is so general an anticipation of dextrous generalities cloaking inconvenient facts,-of decent suppressions of not a few "blots on the 'scutcheon,”—of tender handling of indisputable delinquencies, of judicious oblivion of obscure progenitors, and confident assertion of doubtful and apocryphal pedigrees, that it really requires some courage in any one who does not wish to be set down as a tuft-hunter to avow a predilection for the history of our noble families. And yet, when approached in a proper spirit, this is no uncongenial subject of study for the most independent and the highest minds. A distinguished man in modern times is said to have replied to the question (sometimes asked), who were his ancestors, "I myself am an ancestor!" To such men, who have themselves made a name and created a family, the history of the great men who were the founders and glory of older families cannot fail to possess an especial interest. They can far better understand and appreciate this ancestral greatness who are themselves conscious of having played a similar part, and attained a similar position. They will easily discern the additions and concealments due to the false pride of descendants; and by reference to their own experience, will quickly strike the key-note to the forgotten story. And so, in their various degrees, all the true "working men" of the present age might be expected to find themselves drawn by the tie of congeniality towards those who were the architects of their own fame and fortunes in former times in a much greater degree than those lineal descendants of the latter, to whom the inertia of assured

competence has denied the capacity of appreciating real combatants in the battle of life. The historical study of the peerage is, indeed, about the surest cure for tuft-hunting propensities with which we are acquainted. Its records are a most effective homily against family pride, and one continued exhortation to self-respect and self-reliance. The rapid transmutation of nobodies into somebodies, and the equally rapid displacement of these somebodies by other nobodies, are little calculated to inspire notions of separate caste, or to foster the insolence of aristocratic "toadies." Such narrow and contemptible feelings are not the lessons which will be drawn from an acquaintance with the actual vicissitudes in the peerage; nor can any compilation be taken as a fair representative of the natural results of such a course of reading which disregards the fact, that a history of the nobility of England is a tribute of justice to the illustrious dead, and not a courtly compliment to the fashionable living-a necrology, and not an extended St. James's Chronicle. The host of modern "honourables" (of whose growing number a recent pamphleteer reasonably complains) may still have their family trees and branches duly indicated, and their own proximity to higher grades of nobility marked with appropriate emphasis in the ordinary aristocratic guide-books, without covering and defacing with their insignificant names and addresses the memorials of those in whose actions the whole nation feels an hereditary interest. We would not deprive drawing-rooms and servants' halls of an innocent course of literature; we only claim something more and something different for our libraries and reading-rooms.

As a first step towards such a desirable result, the Historic Peerage of Mr. Courthope, based on the patient and honest labours of the late Sir Harris Nicolas, will be welcome to all historical students. Presenting in alphabetical order a complete outline of the changes in the peerage from the Norman Conquest to the present time, it affords a reliable backbone for the larger Story of the Peerage, the absence of which we have deplored. The compiler confines himself to ascertained facts, such as would be recognised in the Committees of Privilege of the House of Lords as evidence in any claim to a peerage. He therefore may be considered as falling short of, rather than exceeding, the legitimate admissions, according to the usual rules with which historians are satisfied in deciding on matters of fact. We are not aware, however, that we have lost much from the adoption of these stricter legal canons; while we have certainly gained much in the equalisation of family claims, and the consequent avoidance of even the suspicion of partiality on the part of the compiler. Besides the dates of accession

to the peerage, and notices of proofs of sitting in the House, Mr. Courthope has added one or two historical facts in connection with the names, which rest on the authority of recognised documents. He has also entirely re-written, with reference to the latest inquiries and decisions, the introductory chapters on "dignities," which are the key to our whole system of peerage, and of which the dictionary of peers which follows forms at once the "exemplar and the proof." In this introductory matter, as well as in the body of the work, Mr. Courthope seems to have fully entered into the spirit of his predecessor; and the words in which Sir Harris, in the preface to the first edition of his "Synopsis," states his own claims to the confidence of the public, may be applied without hesitation to the present editor.

"To the merit of sedulous care, of rigid impartiality, and to having acted upon the resolution of not stating a single word which he did not believe to be strictly true, with the view of flattering the pride or gratifying the ambition of others, he conscientiously feels that he is entitled: and many instances will be found where dignities which by every previous writer have been attributed to different noble families, are in these pages proved either to be now vested in other individuals, to have become extinct, or never to have been created to the ancestor of the present peer. He has felt that with respect to hereditary honours more than with any other worldly possession, Rien n'est beau que le vrai; and that to attribute a dignity to an individual who has no legal right to it, is a species of falsehood, which, if not so injurious, is at least as morally culpable as any other deviation from truth. Hence he trusts that the public will possess at least one work in which no title is stated to be enjoyed by a peer which is not undoubtedly vested in him."

We cannot, however, expect that the average general reader will be much attracted by such a volume as Mr. Courthope's. The introductory chapters, though really full of points of daily interest, necessarily wear somewhat too much of the legal character of the report from the Lords' Committee, to which they so frequently refer, to command a very large audience according to present literary tastes. They would scarcely be in much demand. in circulating-libraries even of the higher order, such as have recently come into vogue. Mr. Mudie would be a venturous man if he headed the subscription-list with an order for five hundred copies of such a work; and the annual new editions of the ordinary peerage-books, with the latest information respecting births, marriages, and deaths, and the Christian names of all the aristocratic infants of the past year, would be dangerous rivals in country book-societies to Mr. Courthope's simple, not to say rude, outlines. The editor must be content, for the pre