The nobility of Spain boasts of a special antiquity and purity of blood, a descent from warriors and conquerors alone, without the infusion of any of the elements derived from the church, law, and commerce that are to be found in other countries. "Hidalgo" (Itijo d'a1go, son of somebody, not filius ?Tullius) is a term which implies gentility or nobility. The hidalgo alone has in strictness a right to the title "don," which, like "sir" of our knights and baronets, requires the adjunct of the Christian name. When the Christian name is omitted, the title "senor" instead is prefixed with the addition of "de." " Don" has latterly been used by persons who have no proper claim to it about es exten sive as " esquire" in England. Hidalguia, till _recently, conferred important privileges and immunities. The higher nobility are styled grandees; formerly the title was " rico hombre," and the ceremonial of creation consisted in granting the right of assuming the pennon and caldron (pefion y caldera)—the one the rallying ensign of command, the other of maintenance of followers. In contradistinction from the grandees, the class of nobility below them are called " los Titulados de Castilla." Red blood is said to flow in the veins of the hidalgo. blue in that of the grandee. there were three classes of grandees, whose mark of distinction was this—that a grandee of the first class was entitled to put on his hat in the royal presence before the king spoke to him; the second, after the king spoke to him; the third, after the king had spoken and he had replied, The second and third classes are now absorbed into the first. Of the grandees, some bear the title of duke, some of marquis, some of count; but it' is the ambition of every grandee to unite in himself as many grandeeships, or have as many hats, as the phrase is, as he can. This is effected by the marriage of heiresses through whom grandezza descends, and whose names and titles are assumed by their husbands. An enormous accumulation of titles is sometimes found in the person of one grandee. Titles as well as estates go only to heirs of eulail. The titulars of Castile are designed " vuestra seiloria;" in common parlance," ucia." The title of baron is little used in Spain. Physi cally and mentally, the grandees have degenerated from their ancestors, and they have not the influence at court and in the country which landed property ought to give them.
Most of them reside at Madrid, clinging to their nominal lank and real nullity, while they are practically excluded from all the functions of state.
In Russia what nobility existed before Peter the Great was of a patriarchal not a feudal kind; but in his anxiety to assimilate everything to a western standard, the czar took the existing aristocracies of states quite differently situated as the model to which to approximate the fortunate of his own subjects. The Russian nobles have ever since been enlarging their privileges by encroachments on those under them. Before Moscow was burned, the mass of the nobles connected With the court lived there.in great splen dor, and along with their domestic serfs constituted- half the population of that city.
The preservation of noble blood, untainted by plebeian intermixture, has often been reckoned a matter of much moment, In Spain most of all this purity of lineage has been jealously guarded. In the German empire no succession was allowed to fees holding immediately of the emperor, unless both parents belonged to the higher nobility. In France the offspring of a gentleman by a plebeian mother was noble in a question of inheritance or exemption from tribute, but could not be received into any order of chivalry. Letters of nobility were sometimes granted to reinstate persons in this position. It is in Germany still important for many purposes to possess eight or sixteen qnarterings, i.e., to be able to show purity of blood for four or five generations, the father and mother, the two grandmothers, the four great-grandmothers; and also, in ease of the sixteen quarterings, the eight great-great-grandmothers, having all been entitled to coat armor. Among the higher grades of the peerage in England, a considerable number may lie pointed out who do not possess this complete nobility. It is kn Scotland more usual and more regarded, both among peers and untitled gentry, where, the eight or sixteen quarterings are still in use to be displayed on the funeral escutcheon. At some of the minor German courts, the sixteen quarterings were not unfrequently an illusion, diplomas being granted in the absence of a full pedigree, to declare the parties as noble as if they had had sixteen ancestors.