made; and they judge of every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled, and the more offices the more ability.'

But what can be more unjust to the actions and memories of the founders of our noble families than such mode of treatment? It was by the very men who are thus rendered ridiculous, if not contemptible, that the liberties of England were consolidated, her fame established, and her science and literature not merely fostered, but, in some degree, created. Who that reflects upon any

of the striking events in the British annals would not expect to find in works, professing to relate the lives of the most distinguished families, an account of the various scenes in which the several members had been conspicuous, with numerous details illustrative of their personal characters? In such works, if anywhere, the reader might reasonably hope to find those minute particulars and graphic descriptions of memorable transactions, which would carry him back to the very times and places of their occurrence—almost to lose in the excitement of the glowing narrative the consciousness of his own date. Under such an influence he would find himself the companion of the Conqueror in his descent upon our shores, or the hardy Saxon who vainly attempted to resist the invaders; a soldier in Čœur de Lion's expedition to the Holy Land;-one of the inflexible barons who confederated against King John for Magna Charta, and set the example-which has been followed by the Peers of England in every political crisisof vindicating the rights of the people against the tyrannical encroachments of the Crown :-a Knight of the Shire in the first assembly of the Commons in the Parliament summoned in the name of Henry the Third by De Montfort;-one of the sagacious advisers of the English Justinian in the improvement of the laws;-the uncompromising enemy of the favourites Gaveston and De Spenser in the drama which ended in the ruthless murder of Berkeley's roof:'-a Knight founder at the institution of the renowned fellowship of St. George,' or the Garter:'-a companion of the Black Prince in the press and glory of Cressy and Poictiers, and the personal friend of Chaucer and Gower:-one of the few loyal subjects of the amiable but unfortunate Richard in all his trials;-after that monarch's mysterious death a councillor of his successor, the history of whose reign must be faithfully written before he will obtain that place among illustrious Princes to which his extraordinary talents, firmness, and energy entitle him a man at arms, if not the leader of his own retinue, at Harfleur and Agincourt :-a Lancastrian or a Yorkist during the most eventful, most sanguinary, and most obscure period of our history, when, as if from national shame, both parties seem to have combined in destroying every manuscript that would throw

light upon their motives and conduct:-the survivor of those disastrous scenes, and a subject of the voluptuous Edward :—the faithful servant of his sons, Edward the Fifth and the young Duke of York, during their brief existence, or an adherent of their uncle, the much-libelled Gloucester:-one of the many victims to the attempts to displace the wily Tudor, or a zealous supporter of his dynasty, less on Henry's own account than from hereditary attachment to the White Rose which he had planted in his bosom, the decus et tutamen' of his throne:--a courtier, or statesman, under their son, the eighth Henry, the Blue-Beard of England-enlightened by the piety and learning of More, charmed by the poetry of Surrey and Wyat, and finding in the virtues and erudition of the illustrious triumvirate a solace for the barbarous policy of their master.

But it would be endless to mention the memorable transactions in which those who are recorded in Peerages' took part, or the still more memorable men with whom they were contemporaries. The events in later periods of English history need only be remembered to prove that the chief actors in them were not individuals whose lives can be estimated by a list of the situations they filled, or the number of children whom they begat; while a single reference to these books will be sufficient to show that their memoirs should be written by very different persons from a Collins, or an Edmondson; or, with reverence be it spoken, even a Vincent or a Dugdale.

From these remarks on Peerage writers there is one exception; and had it not been for the monomania of fancying himself entitled to an old barony, Sir Egerton Brydges might have produced a history of the English Peerage of a far higher order than has ever appeared. His qualifications for the task are shown by his Memoirs of the Peers of England during the Reign of James I.' and by his Biographical Peerage of the Empire of Great Britain,' in which, on the whole (so far as it goes), he truly says, all prolix details, all the tiresome minutiae of genealogy, have been avoided, while the prominent members of every family have been recorded in such colours as are justified by impartiality and truth-a remarkable, but almost forgotten, work in four small volumes, of which the one relating to the Peerage of England appeared in 1808, the Peerage of Scotland in 1809, and of Ireland in 1817.

It may perhaps be said that such a general history as the Peerage deserves would be far too elaborate a work for individual enterprise, and too expensive a one for professional speculation; and therefore that it could only be called into existence by the personal encouragement and pecuniary resources of the Peers themselves.

themselves. It is a remarkable fact that the purchasers of 'Peerages' are not the nobility or their families, who take little other interest in those works than to render them as worthless as possible, by trying to suppress dates of births-as if age were lessened, and death cheated of his claims, by such concealments; or as if any one really interested in knowing the age of a particular member of a Peer's family could not, and would not, ascertain it from other sources. These suppressions often defeat the object with which they are made: we once heard a very clever honourable,' whose sisters and herself had attained the period when ladies begin to think about their ages, justly observe, I wish they would put our ages in the "Peerages," for we are always supposed to be older than we are."

But if it be admitted that there are many difficulties in the way of inducing the Peers to combine for the production of a general history of their Order, yet to what other cause than discreditable indifference can the extraordinary circumstance be attributed, that the British aristocracy have fewer and scantier elaborate histories of their several families than the nobles of any other country where literature has received the slightest cultivation? There are, no doubt, volumes purporting to be histories of eminent English and Scottish houses, but, with few exceptions, those volumes prove only the incompetency of the writers. We are mistaken if the bare enumeration of but a few Continental works will not cause a transient blush on the noble brows of the possessors of Alnwick, Knowsley, Arundel, Powderham, Eridge, Hatfield, Burghley, Stowe, Trentham, Chatsworth, Belvoir, Alton Towers, and Enville-of Hamilton, Dalkeith, InTake the Historia verary, Kilkenny, Carton, Barons-Court. Genealogica della Famiglia Carafa,' by Aldmirari; the 'Histoire de la Maison Royale de Courtenay,' by Du Bouchet; the Histoire de la Maison de Beaumont;' the Généalogie et Descente de la très illustre Maison de Croy,' by Schoher; the 'Histoire de la Maison d'Harcourt,' by La Roque; the Histories of the great Genoese families of the Doria, Fiesque, Grimaldi, and Spinola-but of folio volumes illustrative of distinguished foreign houses the catalogue would be endless. All these were printed at the expense of the families themselves, whereas all that is known (with rare exceptions) of the noble houses of England has been published at the risk of some bookseller or unfortunate author in Peerages or topographical collections; such, for example, as Mr. Baker's laboured and accurate History of Northamptonshire,' the fate of which most valuable book, and the neglect of its author, are disgraceful to the rich county in question. Of histories of foreign Royal families we shall speak hereafter.

The

The want of Memoirs of great British houses is not a mere literary defect. At the same time that such works would form rich additions to historical and biographical knowledge, and give encouragement to art, they could not fail to produce a beneficial effect on the descendants of those of whom they treated. Young minds insensible to the deeds and fame of a glorious line of ancestry are happily not very common; and when such cases do occur, the cause may often be traced to the neglect or indifference of parents, and to the absence of any attractive family history. It is well said by Feltham that Nothing awakens our sleeping virtues like the noble acts of our predecessors. They are the standing beacons that fame and time have set on hills to call us to a defence of virtue, wheresoever vice invades the commonwealth of man.' What is there in the annals of any Foreign Nobility more deserving of commemoration than in those of the distinguished families of England, which, to use Lord Bacon's words, have so long stood against the waves and weather of time-of such illustrious houses, for example, as the following?

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The NEVILLES-Barons from the time for which records first exist, and ennobled in six younger branches, the possessors at different epochs of the dukedom of Bedford, the marquisate of Montagu, and of the earldoms of Westmorland, Kent, Warwick, Salisbury, Northumberland, and Abergavenny-whose political power was once so irresistible as to place the Crown itself in their hands, and to obtain for one of their race the surname of King-maker.' Repeatedly allied to the blood-royal, the house of Neville has produced a Queen-consort to one, and a mother to two other British sovereigns, from which illustrious lady every subsequent monarch has descended. It has given two Archbishops to the hierarchy, and nine Knights of the Garter to the chivalry of England; and the male line continues unbroken, after nearly eight centuries of Peers :—

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The no less ancient family of GREY-eminent in the baronial lines of Codnor, Ferrers of Groby, Rotherfield, Rugemont, Ruthyn, L'Isle, Wilton, and Groby-which has worn the coronets of the earldom, marquisate and dukedom of Kent, of the earldoms of Huntingdon and Harold, of the marquisates of Dorset and de Grey, and of the dukedom of Suffolk, and which still wears those of the earldoms of Stamford and Warrington-whose close alliances with the Crown led to its usurpation by a daughter of their house, of whom the treason is forgotten in her youth, innocence, and beauty; who, to all the attractions of her own sex, united a profound learning rare even in ours; who remains a model of female excellence; and whose pathetic story, perhaps more vividly than any other, 'points a moral and adorns a tale :'—

The

The HOUSE of STAFFORD-now extinct in the male line, though some of its honours survive through a female heirbarons since the Conquest, and earls of the creation of Edward the Third;-afterwards elevated to the rarest of all distinctions, a dukedom, by Henry the Sixth, in consequence of its alliance with the heiress of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester;whose representatives, Dukes of Buckingham, bore the staff of lord high constable, until it proved too heavy a burthen for a subject's hand;—which obtained for its younger branches an earldom and three baronies; contributed a founder and many other Knights to the Order of the Garter, and produced not only an Archbishop but a Cardinal-thus attaining for its proud name all ecclesiastical as well as all secular honours :-

That ancient race, which is more associated with chivalrous recollections than any other, whose feats have not only been sung by rude contemporary bards, but have been immortalized by the great dramatic genius of our country-the PERCIES,

'Ki sembroit ke eust fait vou

De aler les Escos de rampant.'

Always valiant and indomitable; to-day the most powerful of English Peers, to-morrow in open rebellion and proscribed traitors; at one moment the provincial monarch of unmeasured lands, the lord of impregnable fortresses, and the chief of countless vassals—the next the tenant of a prison, from which there was seldom any other escape than death. These vicissitudes of fortune taught them the instability of all human greatness, and that the only sure trust is Espérance en Dieu.' Not more

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famous in arms than distinguished for its alliances, the house of Percy stands pre-eminent for the number and rank of the families which are represented by the present Duke of Northumberland, whose banner consequently exhibits an assemblage of nearly nine hundred armorial ensigns-among which are those of King Henry the Seventh, of several younger branches of the bloodRoyal, of the Sovereign houses of France, Castile, Leon, and Scotland, and of the ducal houses of Normandy and Brittany, forming a galaxy of heraldic honours altogether unparalleled :—

The COURTENAYS, scions of a house that wore the Imperial purple, and produced a line of French peers, so powerful as to have maintained a long struggle for the honours of Princes of the Blood. In the English branch, barons both by tenure and by writs of summons to parliament, and the inheritors of one of the most ancient of English earldoms, this illustrious family flourished for many centuries as Earls of Devon, married the grand-daughter of King Edward the First, gave a Knight-founder to the Garter, who was the companion in war as in honours, the

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