insisted on that servants should be wholly
abolished; but reform is sadly wanting.

Not being the scion of a lordly house, nor
indeed a scion that was nursed in what is called
"the lap of luxury," albeit a decent and even
opulent sufficiency was never wanting, fate
happily ordained that we should not be waited
on by the dreadful familiars, who seem to be
all prolonged calves and clouds of powder.
Their dreadful offices were never needed. No
one can guess what is in store for us before we
die, or what dazzling service may entitle us to
receive a coronet at the hands of our sovereign.
Yet as such distinction entails the dreadful
offices of those attendants, it would seem to
embitter that laudable triumph. Those long
and languid men, flabby in texture, would
appear to take the function of the slave on the
car of the Roman general. Their terrible
equanimity and monotonous whiteness appal.
In that remote contingency of the coronet just
alluded to, lordly state should be kept
altogether without their assistance. They would
embitter the revels, and on any occasions of
state the aid of hired professionals would more
than suffice.

Wandering round the more noble squares,
we catch glimpses through hall windows and
open hall doors of these splendid but costly
figures. They seem to us outsiders about as
ornamental as the Dresden on my lady's
chimney-piece. They lean languidly and converse
with each other, their calves crossed something
after the manner of the supporting limbs
of a camp-stool. Sometimes they may borrow,
unwittingly, from Cruikshank, and ask one
another in easy innocence, "What is taxes,
Thomas?" Wonderful aristocrats! We serve
them, not they us. Their manner and air, if
imported into the classes above, would be the
perfection of refined hauteur and accomplished
languor. About the door of one of our great
mansions in one of our grander squares, an
"afternoon tea," or what is called a kettledrum,
was lately going on. The carriages
were drawn up in crowds in a pleasant yet
harmonious disorder, en échellon, to use the
military phrase. A whole group of the gentlemen,
who sat behind, were gathered round the
door, talking in an easy way, as if on the steps
of their club. They were rallying, I think, a
very handsome gentleman, certainly over six
feet high, on the natural penchant which they
insisted was entertained for him in a very
exalted quarter. These compliments he
accepted with an air of high-bred good humour,
and without a shade of vexation. I thought I
could distinguish in the group the regular traces
of circles above them; but, indeed, these things
only repeat themselves. I thought I saw the
heavy political man, the old stager, who knows
the world, had been "fast" in his youth, and
seen service—that is, many services; also the
young airy gallant, fresh upon town and delighted
with everything, and whose handling of his cane
betrayed a little inexperience, and the funny
jovial fellow, who had a fund of humour. At
times a loud and hearty burst of laughter, as if
in a club window, attested his powers. Then
came a bit of nature. Up drove a brougham,
clearly an hired one, and hired from an obscure
professor. Its footman got down, and was looking
for a house. This ignorance was raw enough,
and, indeed, a glimpse at the tenants showed
something in the country-cousin way. But the
servant—their servant! He was a mere country
lad, put into a livery made by a country-town
tailor, with a country-town hat, white cotton
gloves a world too wide and too long for his
fingers. But, apart from these accidents, the
air of the fellow betrayed him; he scented of
the plough. He passed by looking at the
numbers wildly, and then went back to his
employers. They pointed to the group of
gentlemen who were conversing, and presently,
a little nervous all the time, he came up to
them and asked for information. The laugh
was suspended. The seven or eight gentlemen
all looked down at this grotesque belonging to
their order, for he was very short, and his coat-
tails stuck in a really comic way. One of them
answered his question with perfect politeness,
not without sarcasm, that "This was the 'ouse
jest be'ind 'im." But as the provincial novice
moved away, elate with his information, the
seven or eight faces looked after him in
intense enjoyment, the young elegant simpered,
the humorist made a joke; there was a galaxy
of smiles, but, mark, nothing to exceed the
laws of propriety. They could not but enjoy
it. But a richer treat remained; when the
ancient brougham drew up, and the provincial
half-page, half-footman—for he hovered on the
boundary between—helped out his ladies
tenderly, the gentlemen drew aside with the air of
high-bred men, yet with a look of amused
curiosity and superciliousness that was charming.
One assumed a sickly smile, and made his eye
blink, carrying out the fiction of an eye-glass.
Yet it must be understood distinctly that as the
country-town ladies passed in, in their country-
town finery of a passé pattern, there was nothing
to trench on the laws of good breeding, save,
indeed, in the behaviour of one gentleman in the
rear, and covered, so to speak, by his fellows,
who threw back his powdered head and gave a
stamp on the pavement in a sort of silent spasm
of laughter. The humorist of the circle was
very pleasant on the whole scene, though in a
low and suppressed voice, as became an
assembly of gentlemen.

But it is in what are called "great houses"
that we feel awe-stricken by these gentry. We
are invited on a visit to the Most Noble the
Marquis of Frendlesham, and find a tall white
being, whose address and calmness, whose
placid stare, make us feel uncomfortable, "told
off" specially to look after our happiness.
His name is perhaps "Churles." In vain
do we reassure ourselves that this is only some
"common fellow," a mere footman, certainly
of inferior clay; for still the result is uncomfortable.
Why not have human beings to wait at
these august places, not icicles or rods? We