do, with the only apothegm they ever learnt by heart,—namely, that it is better to be ruled by one master than by many,—I quite agree with them; unity of power being the principle of republicanism, while the principle of despotism is division and delegation. In the one system, every man conducts his own affairs, either personally or through the agency of some trustworthy representative, which is essentially the same: in the other system, no man, in quality of citizen, has any affairs of his own to conduct; but a tutor has been as much set over him as over a lunatic, as little with his option or consent, and without any provision, as there is in the case of the lunatic, for returning reason. Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent in them, as active in the particles as in the mass, in the circumference as in the centre. Eternal it must be, as truth and justice are, although not stationary."
Let Europeans who, having predicted dismemberment of our Union, proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who believe that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Republic, think well of what great men have written. Though North America were submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as the elements endure,—borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of air, abiding its opportunity to become an active principle. Absorbed in our own peculiar form of egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has cast the cause of humanity upon one die, to prosper or perish by the chances of our game. What belittling of the Almighty! what magnifying of ourselves!
Though often urged, Landor never became a candidate for Parliamentary honors. Political wire-pulling was not to the taste of a man who, notwithstanding large landed interests, could say: "I never was at a public dinner, at a club or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to influence a vote, and yet many, and not only my own tenants, have asked me to whom they should give theirs." Nor was he ever presented at court, although a presentation would have been at the request of the (at that time) Regent. Landor would not countenance a system of court-favor that opens its arms to every noodle wearing an officer's uniform, and almost universally turns its back upon intellect. He put not his faith in princes, and of titles says: "Formerly titles were inherited by men who could not write; they now are conferred on men who will not let others. Theirs may have been the darker age; ours is the duller. In theirs a high spirit was provoked; in ours, proscribed. In theirs the bravest were pre-eminent; in ours, the basest."
Although a democrat, Landor was not indifferent to the good name of his own ancestors, not because of a long pedigree, but because many of these ancestors were historical personages and served their country long and well. That stock must be worthy of honorable mention which, extending with its ramifications over several centuries, gives to the world its finest fruit in its latest scion. It is a satisfaction to spring from hidalgo blood when the advantages of gentle rearing are demonstrated by being greater than one's fathers. In Lander's most admirable "Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare," the youngster whom Sir Silas Gough declares to be as "deep as the big tankard" says, "out of his own head":—"Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and, although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or precedency, and cannot show his family name in the history of his country. Even he who can show it, and who cannot write his own under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of degeneracy,
