The English aristocracy furnished a question for drawing all these large varieties of ignorance to a focus. In coming upon the ground of English institutions, Salmasius necessarily began "verba nostra conari," and became the garrulous parrot that Milton represents him. Yet, strange it is, that the capital blunder which he makes upon this subject, was not perceived by Milton. And this reciprocal misunderstanding equally arose in the pre-occupation of their minds by the separate principles on which, for each side, were founded their separate aristocracies. The confusion between the parties arose in connexion with the House of Commons. What _was_ the House of Commons? Salmasius saw that it was contrasted with the House of Lords. But then, again, what _were_ the Lords? The explanation given to him was, that they were the "noblesse" of the land. _That_ he could understand; and, of course, if the other house were antithetically opposed to the Lords, it followed that the House of Commons was _not_ composed of noblesse. But, on the Continent, this was equivalent to saying, that the Commons were _roturiers, bourgeois_--in fact, mechanic persons, of obscure families, occupied in the lowest employments of life. Accordingly Salmasius wrote his whole work under the most serene conviction that the English House of Commons was tantamount to a Norwegian Storthing, viz. a gathering from the illiterate and labouring part of the nation. This blunder was committed in perfect sincerity. And there was no opening for light; because a continual sanction was given to this error by the aristocratic scorn which the cavaliers of ancient descent habitually applied to the prevailing party of the Roundheads; which may be seen to this hour in all the pasquinades upon Cromwell, though really in his own neighbourhood a "gentleman of worship." But for Salmasius it was a sufficient bar to any doubt arising, that if the House of Commons were not nobles, then were they not gentlemen--since to be a gentleman and to be a _titled_ man or noble, on the Continent, were convertible terms. He himself was a man of titular rank, deriving his title from the territory of Saumaise; and in this needy scholar, behold a nobleman of France! Milton, on the other hand, quite incapable of suspecting that Salmasius conceived himself to stand on a higher level than an English senator of the Commons, and never having his attention drawn to the chasm which universally divides foreign from English nobility, naturally interpreted all the invectives of Salmasius against the Lower House as directed against their principles and their conduct. Thus arose an error, which its very enormity has hitherto screened from observation.