The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are
members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,
military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the
service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged
importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in
which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it
was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,
that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was
unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord
Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm
of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is
without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to
believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his
well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare
concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.
Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished
for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or
clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the
highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as
an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian
or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his
chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius
of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of
obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer
inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of
Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but
let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;
let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and
Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of
knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit