"The thing called SAUNTERING is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others.--The being galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised:--all these would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast." OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE. The title of _illustrious_ was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this noble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this title; and, as it was _then_ bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names. In the time of Constantine, the title of _illustrious_ was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war; but it was not continued to their descendants. At length, it became very common; and every son of a prince was _illustrious_. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet. In the rage for TITLES the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings ILLUSTRES; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be _super-illustres_, a barbarous coinage of their own. In Spain, they published a book of _titles_ for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese; but Selden tells us, that "their _Cortesias_ and giving of titles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it." This remedy was an act published by Philip III. which ordained that all the _Cortesias_, as they termed these strange phrases they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple superscription, "To the king our lord," leaving out those fantastical attributes of which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing the number. It would fill three or four of these pages to transcribe the titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his "Titles of Honour," first part, p. 140, has preserved them. This "emperor of victorious emperors," as he styles himself, at length condescended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled _father_ and _son_: the emperor calling the sultan his son; and the sultan the emperor, in regard of his years, his _father_. Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of _highness_ was only given to kings; but now it has become so common that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to _highness_. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that of _majesty_.