To say the truth, the great neglect of education, in several noble families, whose sons are suffered to pass the most improvable seasons of their youth, in vice and idleness, have too much lessened their reputation; but even this misfortune we owe, among all the rest, to that Whiggish practice of reviling the Universities, under the pretence of their instilling pedantry, narrow principles, and high-church doctrines.

I would not be thought to undervalue merit and virtue, wherever they are to be found; but will allow them capable of the highest dignities in a state, when they are in a very great degree of eminence.  A pearl holds its value though it be found in a dunghill; but however, that is not the most probable place to search for it.  Nay, I will go farther, and admit, that a man of quality without merit, is just so much the worse for his quality; which at once sets his vices in a more public view, and reproaches him for them.  But on the other side, I doubt, those who are always undervaluing the advantages of birth, and celebrating personal merit, have principally an eye to their own, which they are fully satisfied with, and which nobody will dispute with them about; whereas they cannot, without impudence and folly, pretend to be nobly born:  because this is a secret too easily discovered:  for no men’s parentage is so nicely inquired into, as that of assuming upstarts; especially when they affect to make it better than it is, as they often do, or behave themselves with insolence.

But whatever may be the opinion of others upon this subject, whose philosophical scorn for blood and families, reaches even to those that are royal, or perhaps took its rise from a Whiggish contempt of the latter; I am pleased to find two such instances of extraordinary merit, as I have mentioned, joined with ancient and honourable birth, which whether it be of real or imaginary value, hath been held in veneration by all wise, polite states, both ancient and modern.  And, as much a foppery, as men pretend to think it, nothing is more observable in those who rise to great place or wealth, from mean originals, than their mighty solicitude to convince the world that they are not so low as is commonly believed.  They are glad to find it made out by some strained genealogy, that they have some remote alliance with better families.  Cromwell himself was pleased with the impudence of a flatterer, who undertook to prove him descended from a branch of the royal stem.  I know a citizen,[15] who adds or alters a letter in his name with every plum he acquires:  he now wants but the change of a vowel, to be allied to a sovereign prince in Italy; and that perhaps he may contrive to be done, by a mistake of the graver upon his tombstone.

When I am upon this subject of nobility, I am sorry for the occasion given me, to mention the loss of a person who was so great an ornament to it, as the late lord president;[16] who began early to distinguish himself in the public service, and passed through the highest employments of state, in the most difficult times, with great abilities and untainted honour.  As he was of a good old age, his principles of religion and loyalty had received no mixture from late infusions, but were instilled into him by his illustrious father, and other noble spirits, who had exposed their lives and fortunes for the royal martyr.