“What if he could not with the Hevenninghams of Suffolk count five and twenty knights of his family, or tell sixteen knights successively with the Tilneys of Norfolk, or with the Nauntons shew where his ancestors had seven hundred pounds a year before the conquest,”[1] he was, and with as much, or perhaps more reason, contented with his parentage. Indeed his family feeling was so strong, that, if he had been of an illustrious race, pride, he acknowledged, was the sin which would most easily have beset him; though on the other hand, to correct this tendency, he thought there could be no such persuasive preachers as old family portraits, and old monuments in the family church. [Footnote 1: FULLER.] He was far however from thinking that those who are born to all the advantages, as they are commonly esteemed, of rank and fortune, are better placed for the improvement of their moral and intellectual nature, than those in a lower grade. “_Fortunatos nimium sua si bona nôrint_,” he used to say of this class, but this is a knowledge that they seldom possess; and it is rare indeed to find an instance in which the high privileges which hereditary wealth conveys are understood by the possessors, and rightly appreciated and put to their proper use. The one, and the two talents are Oh! bright occasions of dispensing good, How seldom used, how little understood![2] in general more profitably occupied than the five; the five indeed are not often tied up in a napkin, but still less often are they faithfully employed in the service of that Lord from whom they are received in trust, and to whom an account of them must be rendered. [Footnote 2: COWPER.] “A man of family and estate,” said Johnson, “ought to consider himself as having the charge of a district over which he is to diffuse civility and happiness.”—Are there fifty men of family and estate in the Three Kingdoms who feel and act as if this were their duty?—Are there five and forty?—Forty?—Thirty?—Twenty?—Or can it be said with any probability of belief that “peradventure Ten shall be found there?” —_in sangue illustre e signorile, In uom d'alti parenti al mondo nato, La viltà si raddoppia, e più si scorge Che in coloro il cui grado alto non sorge._[3] [Footnote 3: TASSO RINALDO.] Here in England stood a village, within the memory of man,—no matter where,—close by the Castle of a noble proprietor,—no matter who: _il figlio Del tale, ed il nipote del cotale, Natò per madre della tale._[4]