those below by millions of twinkling feet. It is a broad ladder up
which people are always climbing, some slowly, some quickly--from
corduroy to broadcloth; from workshop to counter; from shop-boy to
master; from shop to office; from trade to profession; from the
bedroom over the shop to the great country villa. The other day a
bricklayer told me that his grandfather and the first Lord O.'s father
were old pals: they used to go poaching together; but the parent of
Lord O. was so clever as to open a shop, where he sold what his friend
poached. The shop began it you see. The way up is known to everybody.
But there is another way which we seldom regard; it is the way down
again. The Family Rise is the commonest phenomenon. Is not the name
Legion of those of whom men say, partly with the pride of connecting
themselves with greatness, partly with the natural desire, which small
men always show, to tear away something of that greatness, 'Why, I
knew him when his father had a shop!' The Family Fall is less
conspicuous. Yet there are always as many going down as climbing up.
You cannot, in fact, stay still. You must either climb or slip
down--unless, indeed, you have got your leg over the topmost rung,
which means the stability of an hereditary title and landed property.
We all ought to have hereditary titles and landed property, in order
to insure national prosperity for ever. Novelists do not, as a rule,
treat of the Sinking Back because it is a depressing subject. There
are many ways of falling. Mostly, the father makes an ass of himself
in the way of business or speculation; or he dies too soon; or his
sons possess none of their father's ability; or they take to drink.
Anyhow, down goes the Family, at first slowly, but with ever
increasing rapidity, back to its original level. There is no country
in the world--certainly not the United States--where a young man may
rise to distinction with greater ease than this realm of the Three
Kingdoms. There is also none where the families show a greater