There are two kinds of pride of ancestry. The one
is a poor mean thing, resting in the past, and content
■with the shadow of another man's greatness ; the other
is a living, stimulating power, inciting the man liim-
self, by the contemplation of idealised forms of worth
and duty, to present worthy effort. The one is a worm
at the root, the grave, of personal character ; the other
is the soil from which its roots draw constant nourish-
ment. The one is a narrow torpid thing, nursing
egotism and scorn of others ; the other is the parent of
that wider sense of brotherhood, which is the offspring
of all true enthusiasm. The one demands honour from
others, because some one else has been so gi-eat ; the
other finds in the greatness of that some one else a
reason for self-honour and the loyalty to duty which is
the fruit of self-honour. The one, with all its grand
airs, is close akin to toadyism and snobbishness ; the
other is a fertile parent of self-respect, and allied to a
noble humility.
These two that affect an outside kinship, are in fact
antipodal in their character, and inhabit antipodal char-
acters. Against the mean counterfeit, Ayltncrs Field
is a protest, and a protest driven home by a startling
and bitter example —

" But there — out yonder — earth
Lightens from her o\^^l central Hell — there
The red fruit of an old idolatry —
The heads of chiefs and princes fall so fast,



252 A STUDY OF TENNYSON'S WORKS chap.
