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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 543
When he was a young man at college, Philip had dabbled a
little in this queer science of heraldry, and used to try and believe
the legends about his ancestry, which his fond mother imparted to
him. He had a great book-plate made for himself, with a prodigious
number of quarterings, and could recite the alliances by
which such and such a quartering came into his shield. His father
rather confirmed these histories, and spoke of them and of his wife's
noble family with much respect : and Philip, artlessly whispering
to a vulgar boy at school that he was descended from King John,
was thrashed very unkindly by the vulgar upper boy, and nicknamed
King John for many a long day after. I daresay many other
gentlemen who profess to trace their descent from ancient kings have
no better or worse authority for their pedigree than friend Philip.
When our friend paid his second visit to Sir John Ringwood,
he was introduced to his kinsman's library; a great family tree
hung over the mantelpiece, surrounded by a whole gallery of defunct
Ringwoods, of whom the Baronet was now the representative. He
quoted to Philip the hackneyed old Ovidian lines (some score of
years ago a great deal of that old coin was current in conversation).
As for family, he said, and ancestors, and what we have not done
ourselves, these things we can hardly call ours. Sir John gave
Philip to understand that he was a staunch Liberal. Sir John was
for going with the age. Sir John had fired a shot from the Paris
barricades. Sir John was for the rights of man everywhere all over
the world. He had pictures of Franklin, Lafayette, Washington,
and the First Consul Buonaparte, on his walls along with his
ancestors. He had lithograph copies of Magna Charta, the Declaration
of American Independence, and the Signatures to the Death
of Charles I. He did not scruple to own his preference for
republican institutions. He wished to know what right had any
man—the late Lord Ringwood, for example—to sit in an hereditary
House of Peers and legislate over him 1 That lord had had a son,
Cinqbars, who died many years before, a victim of his own follies
and debaucheries. Had Lord Cinqbars survived his father, he
would now be sitting an Earl in the House of Peers—the most
ignorant young man, the most unprincipled young man, reckless,
dissolute, of the feeblest intellect and the worst life. Well, had
he lived and inherited the Ringwood property, that creature would
have been an earl : whereas he, Sir John, his superior in morals,
in character, in intellect, his equal in point of birth (for had they
not both a common ancestor ?) was Sir John still. The inequalities
in men's chances in life were monstrous and ridiculous. He was
determined, henceforth, to look at a man for himself alone, and not
esteem him for any of the absurd caprices of fortune.