Morning journal and courier., 1883-09-19
Dux and EaIdormen,

IBy E. A. freeman, Tn IoEgman5 Magazine
 Titles, ss now in use, fall naturally into three classes. First there are what we may call descriptive titles, titles which, in them selves and by the ordinary use of language, tell you something about the man. They di- rectIy mark his rank or office as rank grew out of office, they all at first simply expressed office. But titles of office have come so largely to be given to men who do not actu- ally discharge the office that the notion of office has in many cases passed out of sight altogether. In other cases it still keeps it's force. The Duke no longer necessarily con- mands armies. The Earl no longer necessa- rily governs 8 shire. The Marauess no longer necessarily guards frontier. Indeed, as regards the Duke and the Marqusss, we may say that their titles in their later use, as expressing degrees in the peerage, never had any practical meaning in England. Dux was in old times common Latin translation of the English Ealdorman or Earl, and, at @ later time, we had practical Marquesses in the Lords marchers. But the titles of Duke and Marquess, as now used, came in ready made from the Continent in the fourteenth century, as mere honorary titles devised to express a rank higher than that of the Eng fish Earl. But they had been practical titles, expressing real office in other countries at earlier times. The Earl himself had, by the time Dukes and Marquesse came in, become an officer as nominal as themselves; but the
 
 hardly have been forgotten. The official earldom, or some traces of it, lived on long, and died out slowly. The Knight, again, Rider, Chevalier, Miles, has largely fallen away from his duty of fighting his lords bat ties on horseback. But his original business is not so utterly forgotten that of his su- periors in rank. The mere fact that some kinds of knighthood are looked on in some cases as little out of place is proof enough that the older notion of knighthood lives on at least as survival. Titles of hereditary peerage, one may say, have long worked themselves out of all professional, character. Only of late there has been something like the revival of kind of professional peerage in the persons of certain of the law-lords. We have now some members of the House of Lords whose position is not exactly the same either as the purely official peerage of the Bishop or as the purely hereditary peerage of the temporal lord. But this modern change hardly affects the class. The titles of the temporal peer have become mere titles of peerage is in itself hereditary office; they are not official in the sense in which the titles of an ancient Duke who commanded an army, or an ancient Marquess who guarded a iron tier. were official But, though mere titles of honor, they are not bare titles; they are still descriptive they still tell you something about their bearers they at least tell you the rank they bear. They therefore do what plain "Mr. whose bearer may be either small tradesman or the heir presumptive to dukedom-does not do. In short, while plain t'Mr." is mere title, mere shift to avoid the simple use of the persons name, Duke" though a title, is not mere title. for 1t makes known a fact.