The votaries of this latter spurious goddess are, at present, exceedingly numerous here, especially among the young nobility, who, very early in life, begin to labour under an exhaustion of heart, and an evaporation of soul, altogether deplorable. By the time they become men, they are for the most part superannuated in desires, and in the capacity for enjoyment; and their only resource seems to be, the indulgence of a degenerate appetite, for that vulgar and momentary wonder, which is awakened by the display of some fashionable accomplishment, or some ridiculous eccentricity. Horses and dogs, liveried servants, and splendid equipages, the skill of the tailor, the hairdresser, and the jeweller, are all impressed into the service of this passion for notoriety. No amusement or luxury can be too expensive, if it only be fashionable; hundreds are given for a dog, or a horse, because none are to be found in England like it; and thousands are squandered upon themselves and their attendants, with the indiscriminate prodigality of a thoughtless spendthrift. They drive on in the career of dissipation and extravagance, unmindful of the suffering tenantry who support them, and never enter the cottage of the poor man, except to sport with his wretchedness, or to rob his daughter of her virtue. Man is an imitative being; the inferior catches the tone of his superior, and imitates his dress, his manners, and his amusements. Not only young noblemen of inferior genius, but young commoners, willing and able to pay any price for notoriety, tie their cravats, curl their whiskers as they do, and study to look as much like them as possible. These commoners are however considered an inferior cast, only tolerated in the ranks of nobility on the score of spending or losing their money with a good grace. The principal claim they have to nobility

consists in certain resemblances, which may be summed up in the following quaint lines:

"Why surely my blood misgives me. I am of noble kind, for I find myself possessed with all their qualities: love dogs, dice, and drabs; scorn wit in stuff clothes, as I do a handsome leg in a woollen stocking, except it be a woman's; have beat my shoemaker; bullied my seamstress; won my friend's money, attempted his wife, and undone my tailor. Why! look you, if this is not nobility, I inquire of you what it is. I may be the son of a duke, for the present times make nobility rather doubtful."

Upon the strength of these affinities he claims a sort of equality, which claim is allowed while his money lasts, which is not quite for ever. He sticks to the trunk of decayed nobility like the fungus to the rotten wood; and very often, before he is quite ruined, marries the daughter of some noble house, who assists him in getting rid of the remainder, and then, not to be an incumbrance to the poor man, runs away, belike, with one of the heroes of Waterloo.

I would not have you suppose, that all the young and middle-aged nobility of this country are like those I have just described. There are among them a few young men of promise, who may pussibly become useful to the country. But they are rare birds, more so than the black swans. No one, accustomed to hear them talk, and see them act; who has witnessed their strange follies, ridiculous inconsistencies, and unfeeling contempt for the opinions of those below them, can, with any regard to truth, deny, that he ever saw, among an equal number of well educated young men, so many ridiculous blockheads, who neither know what to do with their time or money. Sated with leisure they know not how to enjoy, and tired of pleasures they

have worn out, or which have worn out them, they one day descend to the level of a boxer, the next to that of a stage coachman, thus preparing for becoming the hereditary legislators of their country by debasing themselves to the level of ignorance and brutality. At present, the aldermanic gusto, the noble science of eating, seems to bid fair to carry the day amidst the elevated pursuits and enjoyments of these nobles; and among them are many very commendable proficients of the Apicii. This animal propensity seems one of the few natural characteristics left unimpaired; and all the morning, which lasts till seven or eight in the evening here, is spent in going through certain exercises, or swallowing certain stimulants, to prepare them for the noble solemnity of dinner. I say solemnity, because a funeral is a sort of merry-making, compared with an English feast. Nothing can equal it, except the sublime horrors of a diplomatique dinner at *********** ̧

The natural effects of hereditary honours, and hereditary wealth, upon the human character, are a curious subject of inquiry. In feudal times, the nobility were not corrupted by luxury and idle

ness.

If we inquire into their mode of living, it will be found that their food and drink were of the plainest kinds, and would be considered no great delicacies with our poorer sort in the United States. Instead of a life of pleasure, and effeminate dissipation, their employment was war, and their relaxations, hunting and tournaments. It was their boast to excel the common people, even in those feats of strength and activity, upon which the latter found their claim to superiority. With the advantages of wealth, rank, and a better education than their vassals, it was natural that they should exercise a great sway over them, since they excelled at least in those requisites which command the respect of

The lower orders. But in the name of all human experience, what can be expected from the old wornout nobility of the present day? If they did not now and then ennoble a man of merit to keep up the credit of their order, it would be impossible to find persons among them fit for the most insignificant parish officers. So well is this understood here, that whenever one of these runts of antiquity is sent abroad, or appointed to a high office at home, they always select for him a dry nurse, in the shape of a secretary, to see that his lordly stupidity does not ruin or disgrace the nation.

A life exclusively devoted to pleasure and dissipation, that is to say, mere animal gratifications, almost inevitably produces, not only a complication of bodily infirmities, but also effeminate habits, which degrade a human being below the natural standard. Constitutional defects are much more apt to be hereditary than genius or moral excellence; and folly and madness, together with strange and unheard of physical infirmities, are very apt to become heirlooms in old families, with nothing but noble blood in their veins. It is not therefore much to be wondered at, if the old nobility of England and Europe has become a sort of caput mortuum, out of which nothing but a caput mortuum can come. You cannot conceive the strange and original follies, absurdities, and diseases, bodily and mental, that have generated in the wornout, impoverished soil of nobility. I could mention some of these lordly eccentricities, these gambols of bed-ridden imbecility, that would make you bless your stars for having been born in a land of liberty, where it is next to impossible such strange monsters can be generated. But I wish

not to make merry with human infirmity, and will refrain from any direct or personal allusion to these victims of hereditary honours and hereditary

infirmities. It will be sufficient to mention, that by far the most renowned exploit, performed in the fashionable world within three years past, by one of the ancient nobility, was that of the Marquis of *********, who vaccinated his whole dog-kennel not long since. This was, beyond all comparison, the most illustrious act of his life; and the noble, I beg pardon, the "most noble," marquis attained to the very summit of notoriety.

Pompous notices in the Morning Chronicle, and other publications, which circulate extensively, are the means resorted to by the nobility of this country to keep up the consequence of the privileged orders; and to these shifts are they reduced to prevent the world from forgetting that such people are in existence. You hardly hear of them, except connected with some race horse, boxing-match, or pedestrian exploit, unless it be on occasion of some ostentatious display of wasteful prodigality, or some migration from one place to another, seemingly undertaken with no other object than to get their names into the Morning Chronicle. Nothing appears to excite their sated appetites but this newspaper immortality; and to get into a magazine, is an object they will pursue with greater eagerness than Alexander did the conquest of the world. The noble ambition of becoming eminent by the exercise of talents, or the benefits conferred upon their dependants or their countrymen, seems to have become almost entirely extinct in the young race of nobles; and the last thing they appear to think of, is maintaining their dignity by dignified actions.

I am almost ashamed to confess, even to you, my dear brother, that I came to this country prepared, by habit and by reading, to see among the people of high blood and rank, creatures who realized that mysterious superiority, that noble air, and that in