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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: temper; doing their work according to their light, not altogether
well--what man does that on earth?--but well enough to make
themselves necessary to, and loyally followed by, the masses whom
they ruled. No one can read fairly the "Gesta Dei per Francos in
Oriente," or the deeds of the French Nobility in their wars with
England, or those tales--however legendary--of the mediaeval
knights, which form so noble an element in German literature,
without seeing, that however black were these men's occasional
crimes, they were a truly noble race, the old Nobility of the
Continent; a race which ruled simply because, without them, there
would have been naught but anarchy and barbarism. To their
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