But above all, 'tis pleasantest to get The top of high philosophy, and sit On the calm, peaceful, flourishing head of it: Whence we may view, deep, wondrous deep below, How poor mistaken mortals wand'ring go, Seeking the path to happiness: some aim At learning, wit, nobility, or fame: Others with cares and dangers vex each hour To reach the top of wealth, and sov'reign pow'r: Blind wretched man!

At home, Elizabeth had to contend with a jealous Parliament, a factious nobility, an empty purse, and a divided people.

While she lavished favors upon them,sometimes to the disgust of the old nobility,she was never ruled by them, as James was by Buckingham, and Louis XV.

There were no destructive and wasting wars, no passion for military glory, no successions of court follies, no extravagance in palace-building, no egotistical aims and pleasures such as marked the reign of Louis XIV., which cut the sinews of national strength, impoverished the nobility, disheartened the people, and sowed the seeds of future revolution.

Either the king, or the lord chancellor, or the universities, or the nobility, or the county squires had the gift of the "livings," often bestowed on ignorant or worldly or inefficient men, the younger sons of men of rank, who made no mark, and were incapable of instruction or indifferent to their duties.

Before the Revolution, in municipal governments only the nobility had a sharethey only were the men who could vote: but the change was easy.

We had only to say, the people instead of the nobility had the right to vote; and so, in one day, we buried aristocracy, never to rise again.

All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only to the nobility proper, i. e. to the agnate descendants of curule magistrates; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of them in course of time were extended to a wider circle.

So also with the silver trappings, which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility alone (Liv. xxvi. 37); and with the purple border of the boys' toga, which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates, then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born persons, lastlyyet as early as the time of the second Punic war even to the sons of freedmen (Macrob.

The purple stripe (-clavus-) on the tunic was a badge of the senators (I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate) and of the equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the latter narrow; with the nobility the -clavus- had nothing to do.

The current hypothesis, according to which the six centuries of the nobility alone amounted to 1200, and the whole equestrian force accordingly to 3600 horse, is not tenable.

The stability of the Roman nobility may be clearly traced, more especially in the case of the patrician -gentes-, by means of the consular and aedilician Fasti.

Thus the fifteen or sixteen houses of the high nobility, that were powerful in the state at the time of the Licinian laws, maintained their ground without material change in their relative numberswhich no doubt were partly kept up by adoptionfor the next two centuries, and indeed down to the end of the republic.

Patricio-Plebian Nobility 45.

The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries 58.

Vile and shameless souls (says Luther) for the sake of gain, like flies to a milk-pail, crowd round the tables of the nobility in expectation of a church living, any office, or honour, and flock into any public hall or city ready to accept of any employment that may offer.

"And like the children of nobility, require to eat pap, and, angry at the nurse, refuse her to sing lullaby.

"Nobility without wealth is more worthless than seaweed.

"If children be proud, haughty, foolish, they defile the nobility of their kindred," Eccl. xxii, 8. 3665.

And since among the nobility there were far more males than females he allowed those who pleased, save the senators, to marry freedwomen, and ordered that the offspring of such a man should be deemed legitimate.

But she never liked the smooth red lips, nor the over-pointed nose, which had something of the falcon's keenness without its nobility.

Here is a nobility worthy to compare with the patience of the praedials.

* "To His Grace, Duke Frederick of Styria, Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, and Count of Austria; Charles, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Charolois, sends greeting: "The said Duke Charles recommends himself to the most puissant Duke Frederick, and bearing in mind the great antiquity and high nobility of the illustrious House of Hapsburg, begs to express his desire to bind the said noble House to Burgundy by ties of marriage.

He refused a title of nobility offered him by Duke Philip.

Without being little, Yolanda was small; without nobility, she had the haute mien.