possibly, be seen at court. I am really under great concern for Lord C.".

"Now who would believe," said Etheredge, when his friend had passed," that is a lie, and a very silly one, as all the world knows he was scarcely acquainted with Lord C."

"But he is very intimate," said I, "with Lord C.'s son, and no doubt feels much for him."

"Judge for yourself," said my companion. "The gentleman is neither more nor less than a sentimental tuft hunter by disposition, and a very knavish usurer by profession; perhaps the only one of his sort in town. Having made a fortune by fleecing young heirs who paid him from forty to: fifty per cent., he had been long smitten with the love of courts and titled people; and being the creditor of many of the young nobility, he endeavoured to make use of their necessities, to pass him over from the plebeian shore on which he hatched,, to the sunny bank of aristocracy. In doing this, he would assume a tone of generous indignation against other usurers, who, he said, were only fit to live in their own kitchens, and were satisfied with making no figure, if they could make fifty per cent. of their money; whereas he would be glad to lend to my lord, whom he may call his friend as well as client, at thirty, and

was

even twenty, when the security was particularly good. But as all friendship must be reciprocal, he would ask the young peer in return to facilitate his wish for higher society, more consonant to his fortune and pretensions, and in particular, perhaps, to do him the honour to present him at court. This he actually proposed to the young Lord B., the son of the deceased Lord C., who, in the hope of being let off twenty per cent. (which, however, did not succeed), made the mise demanded, but is thus disabled from performing it, by the death of his father. How much, therefore, of his grief for Lord C. is occasioned by friendship for his son, how much by his disappointment as to the presentation, wiser people may determine."

pro

We had not yet done; for in St. James's Park we were accosted by a person of a very jaunty air, but of wild look and heated jaded countenance, such as the gaming-table or betting-stand bestow upon their frequenters. His tone of voice and manner corresponded with this appearance, and he asked Etheredge how he did, in a sort of slang language, so vulgarly familiar, and yet so sheepishly doubtful of the reception he might meet with, that I could not help afterwards noticing it. Etheredge was evidently cool with him;

but, by way of conversation, asked if he had lately seen his relation Sir James D.?

"I hope the old man is well," he said; "I have a great regard for him and all his family, but I now seldom visit them; for, to tell you the truth, old Squaretoes, and still more my lady, have looked so queer upon me of late, that paying one's duty is anything but agreeable. But I suppose, like the rest of world, they are biassed by those two or three untoward accidents which made such a noise at the time."

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"These accidents," said Etheredge, after he left us, were merely a very gross case of seduction, a fraudulent pecuniary transaction to the amount of some thousands, and, being in parliament, a black political treachery."

I suppose," said I, "he is not received." "I beg your pardon," he rejoined.

I have told you he is in parliament, and the party for whom he betrayed his own received him with open arms.".

"I am horrified," said I; " can such things be?" But my reflections were cut short by encountering a Mrs. S., a well-dressed, fashionable-looking woman, walking with two pretty children; her carriage following, to relieve them when tired. They were in an amiable group, and I saw and

heard nothing in what she said to my companion, which did not entitle me to congratulate him on his acquaintance.

"She is amiable enough," he said, "if left to herself; and can be sensible when she pleases; but she is a martyr to the universal mania of getting above one's own sphere. Though a family friend, she once quarrelled with me for not getting her into Almack's; which I could not have done, even if I had complied with her very modest request." And what was that?"

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Why, you know the rule of those female tyrants the patronesses, that none should have subscriptions who are not on the visiting-lists of some one or other of them; and she not belonging to this élite, the request was neither more nor less than to get her to be allowed to leave her card> with one of their high mightinesses; she proposing to agree to a condition that no acquaintance should follow."

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What meanness!" said I.

"But true," he observed; "and all amply made up if she could have succeeded in obtaining this envied privilege. She is a strange instance how a person, meant by nature to be respectable, and who is really well gifted, can spoil all by the folly of not keeping to her own class, and the consequent tricks and dishonesty of vanity. You see

she is still handsome, and dresses well; but this year, for the first time, she invests her fine head in an enormous cap. She says it is because she is so subject to cold; which she never was in her life. Her maid has let out that it is to cover some provoking grey hairs. I once asked her if she knew. Lady Sarah B. She said she had the honour of her acquaintance, and had been at her house; : and added, 'How charming she is!' It happened that I knew the extent of their acquaintance was, that she had been to inquire the character of a servant; and the visit, as she wished to call it, was of course not returned."

"And is this what you call the universal. mania?" said I. "My ignorance, you see, is great, but I would be glad, if I am worthy of it, to be. enlightened."

"And have you not then," replied Etheredge, "ever heard of the struggles and strifes created by our artificial modes of life; of the consequent. difficulties imposed by the laws of society; and the fetters in which most men, and all women, hold one another? It is the boast of Englishmen, that there are no privileged orders, and that the career of ambition, as well as of the law, is equally open to all. Such is our theoreticalconstitution. But look at our practice, and all is contradicted. Never was such a tyranny as that