official costume. And, on the whole, that hope was not deceived. More
than a century of bitter experience was needed ere the masses discovered
that their ancient rulers were like the suits of armour in the Tower of
London--empty iron astride of wooden steeds, and armed with lances which
every ploughboy could wrest out of their hands, and use in his own
behalf.

The mistake of the masses was pardonable. For those suits of armour had
once held living men; strong, brave, wise; men of an admirable temper;
doing their work according to their light, not altogether well--what man
does that on earth?--but well enough to make themselves necessary to, and
loyally followed by, the masses whom they ruled. No one can read fairly
the "Gesta Dei per Francos in Oriente," or the deeds of the French
Nobility in their wars with England, or those tales--however legendary--of
the mediaeval knights, which form so noble an element in German
literature, without seeing, that however black were these men's
occasional crimes, they were a truly noble race, the old Nobility of the
Continent; a race which ruled simply because, without them, there would
have been naught but anarchy and barbarism. To their chivalrous ideal
they were too often, perhaps for the most part, untrue: but, partial and
defective as it is, it is an ideal such as never entered into the mind of
Celt or Gaul, Hun or Sclav; one which seems continuous with the spread of
the Teutonic conquerors. They ruled because they did practically raise
the ideal of humanity in the countries which they conquered, a whole
stage higher. They ceased to rule when they were, through their own
sins, caught up and surpassed in the race of progress by the classes
below them.

But, even when at its best, their system of government had in it--like
all human invention--original sin; an unnatural and unrighteous element,