band many years, and was last, though not least, in her generation of a wide connection long known for distinguished service to society. Born of a line of true gentlefolk, and united in marriage with a similar line near akin to her in blood, her own most rich gifts of bodily and mental brightness, of womanly sense and virtue, made her a fine example of the earlier New England school of principle and manners. She died amid her descendants to the third generation, in the same house where her married life and her widowhood were passed." *

It is not necessary to have known this lady personally (and I had not that honor) to be fully aware of the place which she and her kindred rightfully held in society; and held not by force of money; for although of that (perhaps the occasion may excuse my presumption) there was surely enough for comfort, and even for elegance, and also for benevolence (rarely appealed to in New England), it may be safely assumed that many a curb-stone broker, whose father would not have entered their house except by the back door, has in six months made more than their entire possessions in past days, by going short or going long, or some other sort of uneven going. This class realized, as nearly as possible, the ideal of a social aristocracy; for their rule, co-existing with municipal equality, was the social superiority and government of the best. Now, when the best are cast down from their social thrones, their places must be taken by those who are little better than gilded rudesbys and successful sharpers. And, indeed, these social aristoi seem to be dwindling in power and importance; beaten down and made comparatively little by the brute power of money in a heterogeneous, half-foreign community, which knows them not, as the Pharaoh arose that knew not Joseph. If the two mingle, the best will surely be debased. That law is absolute. And thus, in any case, it would seem that we are to show that in a perfectly democratic society, where the municipal rights of all are equal and identical, no aristocracy is possible, even in a social sense; but that its seemly and gracious presence must be replaced by a bloated plutocracy, that basest and coarsest and most degrading of social forces.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

*New York "Evening Post," June 7, 1883: manifestly, I think, an adaptation from a Connecticut newspaper.

SHOOTING AT SIGHT.

IN every age of the Christian era, the religion of the Prince of Peace has been perverted by fanaticism or superstition into a conflict of arms between nations and forcible settlement of personal disputes between men. Crusades in the name of him who died on the cross to save the soul, which is the life of man, have been preached and prosecuted to the destruction of both body and soul. Catholicism and Protestantism have engaged in the strife, with alternate victory, and rivaled each other with the sword and fire of persecuting zeal.

To settle the title to a portion of that earth out of which the progenitor of the race was made, wager of battle was the only legal mode of trial in England from the advent of William the Conqueror to the reign of Henry II., if not during all the antecedent Saxon rule; and it had been in vogue in Germany from the beginning of the sixth century. It is as amusing as it is astounding to survey that trial, so solemn and yet so farcical it seems to us now. A piece of ground inclosed by lists was laid out as the scene of the combat; the justices of the Court of Common Pleas, full-robed and ermined, surrounded by the learned sergeants-at-law, sat in state, on an elevated bench, to survey the conflict; issue of right was solemnly joined between the contestants by an appeal on oath to God, each abjuring all enchantment and sorcery whereby the devil might be exalted and the Almighty debased.

During the same period, if one were suspected and accused of a certain class of felony, including the homicide of a relative of the accuser, an appeal lay to the same arbitrament of arms; and the vadiatio duelli, or wager of battle, duel, or single combat, was a personal legal right of every subject of the realm. The ground was staked off and inclosed with like particularity; judges sat in the same solemn array to preside over the appeal

to arms; the combatants, who must fight in propria persona, and not by proxy, were sworn with hands clasped, the accuser that the accused was guilty of the murder or other felony, and the accused that he was not; and thus the issue was joined by body against body, life against life, and the presence of the God of Peace was invoked to decide the judgment and sentence to be written in the one's favor in the heart's blood of the other.

So in the courts-martial, converted into courts of chivalry, points of martial etiquette or military dispute were settled by single combat, under the supervision of the Lord High Constable of England-certainly with much more propriety, it would seem, in cases of military differences than in civil actions for felony or to try title to land. The ordeal was abolished in France in the fourteenth century, not through the operation of reason and a comprehension of its absurdity, but because in a noted case its fallibility was demonstrated. In 1386, one Legris was accused of violence toward a lady. He maintained his innocence, underwent the ordeal, was vanquished, and thereupon was adjudged guilty and executed. After his death,

another man confessed that he had committed the crime for which poor Legris was hanged. This occurrence created an impression which no argument on the preposterousness of the appeal could ever have produced and led to its abolition.

Yet the only mode of trying title-not the mere possession or right of possession to land, but the real right of property therein-in our mother country, until the reign of the second Henry in the latter part of the twelfth century, was by wager of battle or single combat. At that time the parliament, under the advice of Chief-Justice Glanvill, gave the parties the option of trying title to realty by the grand assize or jury trial; but the old right of trial by battle remained a legal mode until the latter part of the reign of George III., in 1818, when that remedy was abolished, together with those of appeals in felonies and in the courts of chivalry. Thus, till the present century, a legal method of settling rights of property in land was personal combat, usually fought by representatives of the litigants, until one or the other was slain or pronounced the word "craven," in which latter event he was thenceforth branded with infamy more intolerable than death.

Men will still fight for land and for revenge. As communities and individuals, they have always so fought. The American

continent is dominated to-day by races which conquered it. The red man occupies but a fraction of the immense huntinggrounds of his ancestors, and our greed for land will not long leave him even that. To re-adjust the boundaries between states and mark the lines of rival dominion, Europe has fought for centuries, and will probably continue to fight until the millennium. The martial roll of England's drum and the defiant scream of her fife, the roar of artillery and the rattle of musketry, the ships of war in which her "march is o'er the mountain wave" and her mariners make their "home upon the deep,"-these have established her title to that broad belt of empire which encircles the globe. The whole zone of her territory is as red as the uniform of her soldiers. Deep in its inmost recesses the heart of France feels the mortification of recent defeat and is aching for vengeance upon Germany. Stronger than love of republican or monarchical or imperial government is that agonizing heart-beat; and it needs but another Corsican's genius, ambition, and energy to give vent to its fury in a mingled wail and war-cry for revenge.

In the court-room to-day men will employ counsel more readily, and pour out fees more freely, for land and for revenge than for aught else of human property or passion. To settle the line between adjacent proprietors, though the dispute may involve the merest trifle of territory, the fight begins in the lowest and ends only in the highest court having jurisdiction. The same spirit that once wielded the sword and buckler now puts metal in the brain and sharpens the tongue of the advocate to settle the same rights and redress the same wrongs. It is but a change of forum and weapons; the passion that impels the contest, whether for greed or for revenge, is the same. He who wins passes still through the ordeal of nerve and perseverance.

Trial by battle, once so prevalent in Europe, was but another form of trial by ordeal, or appeal to the judicium Dei, which was in vogue among the Saxons, and continued after the conquest until the reign of Henry III. If the accused could take in the naked hand a bar of red-hot iron, or walk barefoot over redhot plowshares, or thrust the bare arm into boiling water, and escape unhurt, his innocence was pronounced clear, because only God could work the miracle of his escape; and so it was argued, however illogically, that if two men try the other ordeal, of a contest with deadly weapons, the same Providence would shield

the innocent and overthrow the guilty. The assumption in all cases was that God would intervene for the right.

From the ordeal by battle or single combat, to try land titles, or felonies, or military disputes, by an easy leap sprang the ordeal by the "code" to settle affairs of honor. If the law of the land authorized the settlement of a disputed title, or a theft of goods, or a point of military etiquette, by duel, why should not an insult, a slander, a libel, a defamation of character, an offense to honor, a larceny of reputation, be settled in the same way!

By this course of reasoning, on the continent of Europe and in the island home of our ancestry, writers, generals, and statesmen gave to the duel the approval of their judgment and the sanction of their example. In the mother country, among the number who countenanced dueling, who challenged or fought on points of honor, may be found such great names as the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, of York and Richmond, Fox, Pitt, Castlereagh, Canning, Sheridan, Grattan, Curran, O'Connell, Peel, Disraeli, and Jeffrey.

In France, though she early abolished the ordeal by battle as a judicial proceeding, dueling has been carried to greater extremes than in any other country. During the reign of Louis XIII. two gentlemen held each other by the left hand and with the right stabbed with daggers. Two others shut themselves into a room and cut each other's throat. Richelieu tried hard to suppress the practice, and the Count de Bouteville was beheaded for it in 1627. Even women have fought duels in France; and, in Denmark, women were not permitted to have champions, but did their own dueling, though with certain allowances and advantages. Napoleon, who never shrank from slaughtering men by platoons, had a profound contempt for single combat, and did all he could to suppress the practice. Gustavus Adolphus, when two of his officers wanted to fight a duel, blandly gave them leave, but informed them that he would prepare a gallows for the survivor. Cromwell was equally opposed to it. For the first duel ever fought on this continent, which took place at Plymouth in 1621, the combatants were punished by being tied together neck and heels for several hours. When General Greene refused a challenge, Washington commended him.

But the foolish practice was not to be killed by the edict of any emperor, cardinal, or selectmen; it yields only to the slow process of time and the growth of public opinion. Ancestral