We have such a reluctance to part
with them, that we are content to see them continued by any fiction,
through any indirections, rather than to dispense with old names. In
your country, I suppose, there is no such reluctance; you are willing
that one generation should blot out all that preceded it, and be itself
the newest and only age of the world."
"Not quite so," answered Middleton; "at any rate, if there be such a
feeling in the people at large, I doubt whether, even in England, those
who fancy themselves possessed of claims to birth, cherish them more as a
treasure than we do. It is, of course, a thousand times more difficult
for us to keep alive a name amid a thousand difficulties sedulously
thrown around it by our institutions, than for you to do, where your
institutions are anxiously calculated to promote the contrary purpose.
It has occasionally struck me, however, that the ancient lineage might
often be found in America, for a family which has been compelled to
prolong itself here through the female line, and through alien stocks."
"Indeed, my young friend," said the Master, "if that be the case, I
should like to [speak?] further with you upon it; for, I can assure you,
there are sometimes vicissitudes in old families that make me grieve to
think that a man cannot be made for the occasion.
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