But in Popish countries, the same tendency is seen on a larger scale: the whole ecclesiastical body, parochial or monastic, retires from the contests of life; and fails, therefore, to contribute any part of the _civil_ resistance needed for making head against the military profession. On the other hand, in England, through the great schools of Eton, Harrow, &c., children even of ducal families are introduced to public life, and to popular sympathies, through the discipline of what may be called miniature republics. No country on earth, it is rightly observed by foreigners, shows so much of aristocratic feeling as England. It cannot, therefore, be denied--that a British duke or earl at Eton, and more especially in his latter stages when approaching the period of his majority, is the object of much deference. Entering upon the time when practically he becomes _sui juris_, he has far too much power and influence to be treated with levity. But it is equally true, that a spirit of republican justice regulates his childish intercourse with his fellow _alumni_: he fights battles on equal terms with any of them, when he gives or receives offence. He plays at cricket, he sails or rows his boat, according to known _general_ regulations. True, that his private tutor more often withdraws a patrician boy from the public sports: but, so long as he is a party of them, he neither is, nor, from the nature of such amusements, could be indulged with any special immunities. The _Condes_ and _Ducas_ of Spain, meantime, have been uniformly reared at home: for this we have the authority of Spanish economists, as also of many travellers. The auspicious conductor of the young grandee's education are usually his mother's confessor and his mother's waiting-women. Thence comes the possibility that a Spanish prince should have degraded himself in the eyes of Europe as a sempster and embroiderer of petticoats. Accordingly, the highest order of the Spanish nobility is said to be physically below the standard of their countrymen, in a degree too apparent to escape general notice; whilst in the same relations our own nobility has been generally pronounced the finest _animal_ race amongst us.