e of
their manners; Tories in their politics, and aristocrats in their
sympathies.

The traveller, if admitted as a stranger to these grand assemblages,
would have seen but few lawyers, except of the very highest distinction,
perhaps here and there a bishop or a dean with the paraphernalia of
clerical rank, but no physician, no artist, no man of science, no
millionaire banker, no poet, no scholar, unless his fame had gone out to
all the world. The brilliancy of the spectacle would have dazzled him,
and he would unhesitatingly have pronounced those titled men and women
to be the most fortunate, the most favored, and perhaps the most happy
of all people on the face of the globe, since, added to the distinctions
of rank and the pride of power, they had the means of purchasing all the
pleasures known to civilization, and--more than all--held a secure
social position, which no slander could reach and no hatred
could affect.

Or if he followed these magnates to their country estates after the
"season" had closed and Parliament was prorogued, he would have seen the
palaces of these lordly proprietors of innumerable acres filled with a
retinue of servants that would have called out the admiration of Cicero
or Crassus,--all in imposing liveries, but with cringing manners,--and a
crowd of aristocratic visitors, filling perhaps a hundred apartments,
spending their time according to their individual inclinations; some in
the magnificent library of the palace, some riding in the park, others
fox-hunting with the hounds or shooting hares and partridges, others
again flirting with ennuied ladies in the walks or boudoirs or gilded
drawing-rooms,--but all meeting at dinner, in full dress, in the carved
and decorated banqueting-hall, the sideboards of which groaned under the
load of gold and silver plate of the rarest patterns and most expensive
workmanship. Everywhere the eye would have rested on priceless pictures,
rare tapestries, bronze and marble ornaments, sumptuous sofas and
lounges, mirrors of Venetian glass, chandeliers, antique vases,
_bric-a-brac_ of every description brought from every corner of the
world. The conversation of these titled aristocrats,--most of them
educated at Oxford and Cambridge, cultivated by foreign travel, and
versed in the literature of the day,--though full of prejudices, was
generally interesting; while their manners, though cold and haughty,
were easy, polished, courteous, and dignified. It is true