Lady Flamborough, therefore, though of course banished from all tolerable society, still continued to be Lady Flamborough, and to enjoy a handsome jointure. On her total expulsion from the set among whom her marriage had, for a time, given her a place, she descended till she found her level among that, rationally speaking, only disreputable class, made up of those who have lost caste by their own wilful departures from principle, and those who are contemptible enough to be willing to associate with vice, for the love of the _tarnished tinsel_ which once was rank; forgetful that titles and honours were first invented as badges of the virtuous or heroic deeds of those on whom they were bestowed; that only as such they have any meaning; and that, when borne by the vicious, they become, in a peculiar degree, objects for the finger of scorn to point at, and seem to claim, as their especial privilege, the contempt and derision of mankind. "'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great." Titles are attainted for high treason, why should they not be so for every treason against good morals? Are not good morals as essential to the well-being of the community as good Government? Nay, what is Government? Power to enforce moral order. Why then should not a sin against the end be visited as severely as a sin against the means? Are men, whose vices invade the peace of the domestic hearth, and sunder the sacred ties of life,--or men who court luxury in foreign climes, while evading the payment of their just debts at home; consigning the while industrious tradesmen and their helpless families to ruin;--are men, in short, who are no longer men of honour, to be still misnamed _noble men_? Is it not the natural tendency of such misnomers to bring nobility into contempt? And is not this an injustice to the truly _noble_? Are the vicious to be allowed to sully honours till the honourable cannot wear them? Nobility would indeed be beautiful were it a guarantee of virtue! titles would indeed be honours, if the men who bore them must be pure! And if the certainty that those titles for ages had existed in that family, were thus an assurance that morality for centuries had not been sinned against in that house, then indeed, would rank be nobility. Let us not be misunderstood: let us not be supposed to mean that men of rank are more likely to offend against the laws of morality than other men; on the contrary, education and circumstances ought to render them less so: we simply assert, that when they do so offend, such offence ought to degrade them from their rank as _noble men_. How glorious would be that land that first enacted such a law! how worthy its monarch of that greatest of his titles, "Defender of the Faith!" For what is this faith? Religion! and the author of Religion has defined it thus: "True religion and undefiled, before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keep himself unspotted from the world."