ound, but by far the greater
part of the Peers were of yesterday. Nor could the House be kept up at
all but for new creations. They were made from rich trade or from the
Law, the latter conferring respect and dignity upon the House. But
lawyers could no longer be made Peers. They were rough in manners, and
they had no longer great incomes. Moreover, the nation demanded that
its honours should be equally bestowed upon all those who rendered
service to the State, and all were poor. Now a House of poor Lords is
absurd. Equally absurd is a House of Lords all brewers. Hence the fall
of the House of Lords was certain. In the year 1924 it was finally
abolished.

In the next chapter I propose to relate what followed this rush into
the Professions. We have seen how the grant of the higher education to
working lads caused the Conquest of the Professions and brought about
the change I have indicated. We have seen how this revolution was
bound to sweep away in its course the last relics of the old
aristocratic constitution of the country. It remains to be told how
learning, when it became the common possession of all clever lads,
ceased to be a possession by which money could be made, except by the
very foremost. Then the boys went back to their trades. If the reign
of the gentleman is over, the learning and the power and culture that
has belonged to the gentleman now belongs to the craftsman. This, at
least, must be admitted to be pure gain. For one man who read and
studied and thought one hundred years ago, there are now a thousand.
Editions of good books are now issued by a hundred thousand at a time.
The Professions are still the avenues to honours. Still, as before,
the men whom the people respect are the followers of science, the
great Advocate the great Preacher, the great Engineer, the great
Surgeon, the great Dramatist, the great Novelist, the great Poet. That
the national honours no longer take the form of the Peerage will not,
I think, at this hour, be admitted to be a subject for regret by even
the stanchest Conservative.

[1893.]

I.--THE LAND OF ROMANCE

At the back of the setting sun; beyond the glories of the evening; on
the other side of the broad, mysterious ocean, lay for nine
generations of Englishmen the Land of Romance. It began--for the
English youth--to be the Land of Romance from the very day when John
Cabot discovered it for the Bristol merchants it continued to be their
Land of Romance w