quarries, which were all singularly unproductive.
He had a brick-field where there was no
clay, and drained marshes that were never
above water. Finally, after having spent all
he possessed and all he could beg, borrow, or by
any means obtain, he died, in eighteen
hundred and twelve, to the intense grief of
the Jews, of his lawyers, and of his very
numerous family, leaving to his eldest son
Harold the title, the large (encumbered)
estates, the splendid (pawned) plate, the
capital modern furniture, the innumerable
post-obits, the countless debts, mortgages,
law-suits, annuities and pensions chargeable,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The unfortunate young nobleman who
succeeded to this dismal inheritance became of
the republic of Bohemia not from choice
but from necessity. Bohemianism was thrust
upon him. As he had been himself during
his father's lifetime what in those days was
denominated wild, and had done a good
deal in the post-obit and general stamped
paper line himself, he had no sooner come to
his father's coronet, than he began to
frequent the Jews and the lawyers to the full
as much as his papa. And as his lordship's
racehorses were running at the same time as
his lordship's acceptances; as he was
continually buying fresh estates, borrowing
money at thirty per cent. to pay for them,
and then selling said estates at a loss to pay
the interest of the borrowed money; as he
embarked large sums in the establishment of
a fourth Italian Opera for the metropolis; as
he was credulously attached to the idea that
a silver mine existed upon some land he had
in Scotland, and spent a few thousands
in search of said mine, yearly; as he
considered himself to be a first-rate judge of
Italian pictures by the old masters, and
wasn't, but was a constant purchaser,
notwithstanding; as he had a decided penchant
for litigation, and was constantly appealing
to the court above against the decisions of
the court below, which appeals were as
constantly dismissed with costs; as he speculated
to a large amount in railways which obstinate
parliamentary committees refused to sanction
bills for; as he kept two or three different
households and families besides his own lawful
one at home; and as, finally, he delighted,
to a pitch of delirium, in a certain game into
the carrying on of which closed doors, a
green table, and sundry rakes, cylindrical
boxes, and little cubes of ivory spotted black,
enter, and which involves a partial paralysis
of the wrist and elbow, his lordship had not
enjoyed his titles and estates many years
before the Bohemian hue of his complexion
became positively Stygian in blackness. It
takes some time, however, to ruin a lord—at
least, openly. There is such divinity doth
hedge the proprietor of a velvet cap with a
gold ring stuck round with imitation pearls,
that though he be notoriously insolvent and
impecunious, years will elapse before the
tailor will lay down his shears in his service;
before Mr. Quartermaine will refuse to supply
the jobbed horses; before Mr. Giblett will
discontinue sending in the haunches of
mutton; before even astute Mr. Mordecai
Overdue will refuse lending something, be it
ever so small a modicum, upon a stroke of his
lordship's fist. Ah! say not that these are
the days of scepticism. What implicit, what
devout, what child-like credence we place in
the veriest shams, the grossest impostures,
the most palpable lies! Sceptics! We pin
our faith on a wig. We swear by two square
inches of gold lace; we fall down prostrate
before a name in a book bound in red
leather; we believe in a cocked hat as in
salvation; and yet we boggle over a winking
picture, or a phial of liquifying blood.

Ruin, however, though long delaying,
comes at last to the improvident. Like death
it spares the regum turres no more than the
pauperum tabernas. The Earl of Fourcloze
went to sleep in his palace at Vellum and
woke up in Bohemia. The ten tribes of
Israel made a descent upon his inheritance
and divided it between them. The lawyers
had a saturnalia and feasted on parchment,
and were drunk with red tape. The bailiffs
threw off the liveries they had worn as a
disguise for years, and were real bailiffs and
men in possession—hook noses, red pocket
handkerchiefs, ash-sticks, and all once more.
The auctioneer wrote a Carmen Triumphale
and called it a catalogue. Many talked, more
whispered, more still shook their heads,
according to the Burleigh theory of wisdom;
a few—a very few pitied, and said poor Lord
Fourcloze. So they began to sell him up.
They sold the town mansion in Nineveh
Square; the manor house in Wales, the land
in Scotland, and the great show palace of
Vellum, with its pictures, and statues, and
bronzes; its carvings, tapestries, and stained
glass; its many thousand ounces of plate; its
cut-glass and objects of vertu. They sold the
house and the park—the tall trees (which
Lord Fourcloze would so dearly have liked to
have sold himself, if he had dared), the
pineries, the conservatories, the aviaries, the
peacocks, the deer, the lodge, and the lodge-
gates, and the gate posts with the two
dolphins, very scaly, rampant. Mr. Gong, the
auctioneer, sold them all with orations worthy
of Cicero; and the Earl of Fourcloze went up
to town and took lodgings in Jermyn Street,
nominally in the parish of St. James's but
really in the province of Bohemia.

Towards three of the clock on sunny
afternoons during the season, you may see creeping
up St. James's Street a shrivelled person,
elderly, with a fur collar attached to a brown
coat, patent-leather boots, a glossy wig, a
shiny hat with a turned-up brim. Common
people who were in the same state of poverty
and Bohemianism as this elderly person,
would be dull and rusty in appearance; but
he, being a nobleman, shows his misery in