dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.

Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to
sacrifice, was



THE DUTY OF LOYALTY,

which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other
virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics,
with other classes of people, but this virtue--homage and fealty to a
superior--is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity
is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,--a
gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the
code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance.

In spite of Hegel's criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals,
being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a
bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of
his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue.
Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of
was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but
because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people
where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where "everybody is as
good as anybody else," and, as the Irishman added, "better too," such
exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed
"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among
us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the
Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the