Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/187

Rh chical State; her government on aristocracy, the government of all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There, nobility is the blossom of the State; aristocratic birth brings wealth, office, and their consequent social distinction. Political offices are chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king, the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of birth. He is not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree.

As the State is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is the production of aristocrats; each, noble family transmits the full power of its blood only to a single person—the eldest son; of the highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.

As the nobility are the blossom of the State, great pains must be taken with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy families. As England is not merely a military or ecclesiastical State, though partaking largely of both, but commercial, agricultural, and productive in many ways; as she holds a very prominent place in the politics of the world, so there must be a good general education provided for these persons; otherwise their power would decline, the nobility and gentry sink into contempt, and the government pass into other hands,—for though a man may be born to rank and wealth, he is not born to knowledge, nor to practical skill. Hence institutions are founded for the education of the aristocractic class: Oxford and Cambridge, "those twins of learning," with their preparatories and help-meets.

The design of these institutions is to educate the young men of family and fortune. The aim in their academic culture is not as in Pagan Rome, a military state, to make soldiers, nor as in Christian Rome, to turn out priests; it is