Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 2. Samuel Warren

      From this I think it will appear, that on the death of Augustus, fifth earl and twentieth baron, with no other issue than Lady Cecilia, the earldom being then extinct, the barony would descend upon the Lady Cecilia; and that, in the event of her dying without issue in the lifetime of her father, Tittlebat Titmouse would, on the earl's death without other lawful issue, become Lord Drelincourt, twenty-first in the barony! and in the event of her dying without issue, after her father's death, Tittlebat Titmouse would become the twenty-second Lord Drelincourt; one or other of which two splendid positions, but for the enterprising agency of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, would have been occupied by Charles Aubrey, Esq.;—on considering all which, one cannot but remember a saying of an ancient poet, who seems to have kept as keen an eye upon the unaccountable frolics of the goddess Fortune, as this history shows that I have. 'Tis a passage which any little schoolboy will translate to his mother or his sisters—

      At the time of which I am writing, the Earl of Dreddlington was about sixty-seven years old; and he would have realized the idea of an incarnation of the sublimest PRIDE. He was of rather a slight make, and, though of a tolerably advanced age, stood as straight as an arrow. His hair was glossy, and white as snow: his features were of an aristocratic cast; their expression was severe and haughty; and I am compelled to say that there was scarce a trace of intellect perceptible in them. His manner and demeanor were cold, imperturbable, inaccessible; wherever he went—so to speak—he radiated cold. Comparative poverty had embittered his spirit, as his lofty birth and ancient descent had generated the pride I have spoken of. With what calm and supreme self-satisfaction did he look down upon all lower in the peerage than himself! And as for a newly-created peer, he looked at such a being with ineffable disdain. Among his few equals he was affable enough; and among his inferiors he exhibited an insupportable appearance of condescension—one which excited a wise man's smile of pity and contempt, and a fool's anger—both, however, equally nought to the Earl of Dreddlington!—If any one could have ventured upon a post mortem examination of so august a structure as the earl's carcass, his heart would probably have been found to be of the size of a pea, and his brain very soft and flabby; both, however, equal to the small occasions which, from time to time, called for the exercise of their functions. The former was occupied almost exclusively by two feelings—love of himself and of his daughter, (because upon her would descend his barony;) the latter exhibited its powers (supposing the brain to be the seat of the mind) in mastering the military details requisite for nominal soldiership; the game of whist; the routine of petty business in the House of Lords; and the etiquette of the court. One branch of useful knowledge by the way he had, however, completely mastered—that which is so ably condensed in Debrett; and he became a sort of oracle in such matters. As for his politics, he professed Whig principles—and was, indeed, a bitter though quiet partisan. In attendance to his senatorial duties, he practised an exemplary punctuality; was always to be found in the House at its sitting and rising; and never once, on any occasion, great or small, voted against his party. He had never been heard to speak in a full House; first, because he never could summon nerve enough for the purpose; secondly, because he never had anything to say; and lastly, lest he should compromise his dignity, and destroy the prestige of his position, by not speaking better than any one present. His services were not, however, entirely overlooked; for, on his party coming into office for a few weeks, (they knew it could be for no longer a time,) they made him Lord Steward of the Household; which was thenceforward an epoch to which he referred every event of his life, great and small. The great object of his ambition, ever since he had been of an age to form large and comprehensive views of action and conduct, to conceive superior designs, and to achieve distinction among mankind—was, to obtain a step in the peerage; for considering the antiquity of his family, and his ample, nay, superfluous pecuniary means—so much more than adequate to support his present double dignity of earl and baron—he thought it but a reasonable return for his eminent political services, to confer upon him the honor which he coveted. But his anxiety on this point had been recently increased a thousand-fold by one circumstance. A gentleman who held an honorable and lucrative official situation in the House of Lords, and who never had treated the Earl of Dreddlington with that profound obsequiousness which the earl conceived to be his due—but, on the contrary, had presumed to consider himself a man, and an Englishman, equally with the earl—had, a short time before, succeeded in establishing his title to an earldom which had long been dormant, and was, alas, of creation earlier than that of Dreddlington. The Earl of Dreddlington took this untoward circumstance so much to heart, that for some months afterwards he appeared to be in a decline; always experiencing a dreadful inward spasm whenever the Earl of Fitzwalter made his appearance in the House. For this sad state of things there was plainly but one remedy—a Marquisate—at which the earl gazed with the wistful eye of an old and feeble ape at a cocoa-nut, just above his reach, and which he beholds at length grasped and carried off by some nimbler and younger rival.

      Among all the weighty cares and anxieties of this life, however, I must do the earl the justice to say, that he did not neglect the concerns of hereafter—the solemn realities of that Future revealed to us in the Scriptures. To his enlightened and comprehensive view of the state of things around him, it was evident that the Author of the world had decreed the existence of regular gradations of society. The following lines, quoted one night in the House by the leader of his party, had infinitely delighted the earl—

      When