its scabbard and run him through the body; the ‘beggarly, unmannered corse’ would have been thrown into the Thames or the next ditch; and woe to any person that should have attempted to make a stir in the matter! ‘The age of chivalry is gone, that of constables, legislators, and Grub-street writers, has succeeded, and the glory of heraldry is extinguished for ever.’ ‘The melancholy Jacques grieves at that.’ Poor Sir Walter! the times are changed indeed, since a Duke of Buckingham could send a couple of bullies, equipped in his livery, with swords and ribbons, to carry off a young lady from a Peveril of the Peak, by main force, in the face of day, and yet the bye-standers not dare to interfere, from a dread of the Duke’s livery and the High Court of Star Chamber! It is no wonder that the present Duke of Buckingham (the old title new revived) makes speeches in the Upper House to prove that legitimate monarchs have a right, whenever they please, to run their swords through the heart of a nation and _pink_ the liberties of mankind, thinking if this doctrine were once fully restored, the old times of his predecessor might come again,— ‘New manners and the pomp of elder days!’ It is in tracing the history of private manners that we see (more than any thing else) the progress that has been made in public opinion and political liberty, and that may be still farther made. No one individual now sets up his will as higher than the law: no noble Duke or Baron bold acts the professed bully or glories in the character of a lawless ruffian, as a part of the etiquette and privileges of high rank: no gay, gaudy minion of the court takes the wall of the passengers, sword in hand, cuts a throat, washes his white, crimson-spotted hands, and then to dinner with the king and the ladies.—_That_ is over with us at present; and while that is the case, Hampden will not have bled in the field, nor Sydney on the scaffold, in vain! Even the monarch in this country, though he is above the law, is subject to opinion; ‘submits,’ as Mr. Burke has it, both from choice and necessity, ‘to the soft collar of social esteem, and gives a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners!’