en children. Wentworth
Langdon, Esquire, was the oldest of these, and lived in the old
family-mansion. Unfortunately, that principle of the diminution of
estates by division, to which I have referred, rendered it somewhat
difficult to maintain the establishment upon the fractional income which
the proprietor received from his share of the property. Wentworth
Langdon, Esq., represented a certain intermediate condition of life not
at all infrequent in our old families. He was the connecting link
between the generation which lived in ease, and even a kind of state,
upon its own resources, and the new brood, which must live mainly by its
wits or industry, and make itself rich, or shabbily subside into that
lower stratum known to social geologists by a deposit of Kidderminster
carpets and the peculiar aspect of the fossils constituting the family
furniture and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a race, which comes
before the rapid ebb of its prosperity, is familiar to all who live in
cities. There are no more quiet, inoffensive people than these children
of rich families, just above the necessity of active employment, yet not
in a condition to place their own children advantageously, if they happen
to have families. Many of them are content to live unmarried. Some mend
their broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some leave a numerous
progeny to pass into the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so
that you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls names which, a few
generations back, were upon parchments with broad seals, and tombstones
with armorial bearings.

In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar to us in the streets.
They are very courteous in their salutations; they have time enough to
bow and take their hats off,--which, of course, no businessman can afford
to do. Their beavers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well
polished; all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable
walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits,--they
frequent reading-rooms,--insurance-offices,--they walk the same streets
at the same hours,--so that one becomes familiar with their faces and
persons, as a part of the street-furniture.

There is one curious circumstance, that all city-people must have
noticed, which is often illustrated in our experience of the slack-water
gentry. We shall know a certain person by his looks, familiarly, for
years, but never have learned his name. A