the rank of the person for whom the service is performed or whose
livery is worn. So, those offices which are by right the proper
employment of the leisure class are noble; such as government,
fighting, hunting, the care of arms and accoutrements, and the
like -- in short, those which may be classed as ostensibly
predatory employments. On the other hand, those employments which
properly fall to the industrious class are ignoble; such as
handicraft or other productive labor, menial services and the
like. But a base service performed for a person of very high
degree may become a very honorific office; as for instance the
office of a Maid of Honor or of a Lady in Waiting to the Queen,
or the King's Master of the Horse or his Keeper of the Hounds.
The two offices last named suggest a principle of some general
bearing. Whenever, as in these cases, the menial service in
question has to do directly with the primary leisure employments
of fighting and hunting, it easily acquires a reflected honorific
character. In this way great honor may come to attach to an
employment which in its own nature belongs to the baser sort.
In the later development of peaceable industry, the usage of
employing an idle corps of uniformed men-at-arms gradually
lapses. Vicarious consumption by dependents bearing the insignia
of their patron or master narrows down to a corps of liveried
menials. In a heightened degree, therefore, the livery comes to
be a badge of servitude, or rather servility. Something of a
honorific character always attached to the livery of the armed
retainer, but this honorific character disappears when the livery
becomes the exclusive badge of the menial. The livery becomes
obnoxious to nearly all who are required to wear it. We are yet
so little removed from a state of effective slavery as still to
be fully sensitive to the sting of any imputation of servility.