by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Author)

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction, -whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages