But if ever he had any of this
erroneous feeling, he completely freed himself from it by living
among the Maltese during their arduous trials, as long as the French
continued masters of their capital. He witnessed their virtues, and
learnt to understand in what various shapes and even disguises the
valuable parts of human nature may exist. In many individuals, whose
littleness and meanness in the common intercourse of life would have
stamped them at once as contemptible and worthless, with ordinary
Englishmen, he had found such virtues of disinterested patriotism,
fortitude, and self-denial, as would have done honour to an ancient
Roman.
There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly
feeling, very different even from that which is the most like it, the
character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of
Europe. This feeling probably originated in the fortunate
circumstance, that the titles of our English nobility follow the law
of their property, and are inherited by the eldest sons only.
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