Nobles are found in every nation where the memory of ancestors is reckoned for anything. There can be no doubt that nobility was common among the Franks and other barbarous people who invaded Europe. But in what point of view was this nobility looked upon before the eleventh and twelfth centuries? How was it at first constituted? How was the illustration of races transmitted? We are in possession of very few monuments to assist in deciding these questions; and when we have thoroughly studied the history of the middle ages, we have nothing better to do than to imitate the genealogists, who, when embarrassed in explaining the origin of the most ancient families, content themselves with assigning it to the night-time of the past. When we reflect upon the rapidity with which generations pass away, and how difficult it is, even in civilized times, for most families to make out their own history during a single century, can we be astonished that, in times of ignorance and barbarism, there have been so few means of preserving the memory of the most illustrious families? In addition to the almost entire absence of written documents, the idea of true grandeur, the idea of that which constitutes heroic illustration, did not yet strike men’s minds sufficiently forcibly to make them preserve a long remembrance of it.[97] In these barbarous times, men, and even princes, were most frequently only distinguished by their physical qualities or their bodily defects. To be convinced of this truth we have but to glance at the list of kings of the middle ages, in which we find the names of Pepin-le-Bref (Pepin the Short), Charles-le-Chauve (Charles the Bald), William-le-Roux (William Rufus, or the Red), Louis-le-Gros (Louis the Fat), Frederick-Barbereusse (Frederick Barbarossa, or Red Beard), and many others, whom their age only designated by that which struck their eyes and was obvious to the grossest perception. There are few things more curious for an observer, than to see how old chronicles make us acquainted with the personages whose actions they give an account of. They never omit in their pictures, either the colour of the hair, or the stature, or the countenance of the princes and heroes; and their historical portraits (may I be allowed the comparison?) bear much less resemblance to a passage of history, than to those descriptions which are now-a-days written upon the passports of travellers.