Note 11 — Chapter XXVI · THE EARL OF WORCESTER.

"It is vain," says Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, "that some writers would seek to cleanse the memory of the learned nobleman from the stain of cruelty, by rhetorical remarks on the improbability that a cultivator of letters should be of a ruthless disposition. The general philosophy of this defense is erroneous. In ignorant ages, a man of superior acquirements is not necessarily made humane by the cultivation of his intellect; on the contrary, he too often learns to look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay. Of this truth all history is pregnant."