WHAT PRICE THE PEERAGE?

In the days when the Black Prince shattered the Genoese cross-bowmen at Crecy, and Sir John Chandos was the model of knightly chivalry for all the young squires of England, to be a duke or a marquis, or even a baronet, meant something. When the sword of the sovereign touched a blood-stained shoulder, all the world knew that the favored one had accomplished a mighty deed of valor, or that the army of King Philip had lost another eagle. The golden spur implied bravery, and honorable achievement.

Even five hundred years later, when the gay blades of the Regency astounded all London with their debonnaire deviltry, a newly-created title stood for something distinctly above the average. While the recipient did not necessarily have to be a military or political genius, he was at the very least a possessor of large and lucrative estates, or master of the royal foxhounds.

With the decline of almost every other relic of the good old past, however, the peerage has also suffered a perceptible lowering of morale. One can never tell these days who one will sit next to when one drops in at the House of Lords. One's neighbor may be a descendant of some ancient and historic house in the north of Wales, or he may be a remarkably successful groceryman from Whitechapel. It is all most upsetting.

But there is balm for the broken spirited, in spite of it all. A mere up-start who wins his way to the proud title of duke pays for his vanity o ver thirteen thousand dollars, so that the belted earl whose coronet has come down from father to son through dim and distant generations can comfort himself with the reflection that the ambitious climber is charged a pretty penny for his purple. In fact so steep is the price that many honest laboring men find it more advantageous to refuse glittering but costly honors, and remain unadorned but wealthy members of the common herd.