a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the privilege
of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any clergyman, any
officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an attorney, even
a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister, or, for
that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of more
consequence than a curate or a poor soldier. The court has scarcely
any social significance in England. I once asked a young barrister if
presentation would help him in the least in making his way in society.
He said, "Not a bit."

In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is
no part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed away.
They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not already
in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly make his
appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard a family
who went down to London to be presented made the target for the
ridicule of the whole neighborhood.

On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in the
diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and levees at
Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, and was invited to the court balls
and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities are given only
to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle. It must be
understood that there is at every court in Europe a select and elegant
and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come in. Along with
them enter also the ministers of state and the household officers of
the Crown. The general circle, as it is called, includes everybody
else. Another entrance and staircase are provided for it, and in that
way all of British society, from a duke to a half-pay captain, gains
admittance to the sovereign. When one is in the inside of Buckingham
or St. James's Palace the same distinction exists. The room in which
the members of the royal family r