full of prejudices, was generally interesting; while their manners, though cold and haughty, were easy, polished, courteous, and dignified.  It is true, most of them would swear, and get drunk at their banquets; but their profanity was conventional rather than blasphemous, and they seldom got drunk till late in the evening, and then on wines older than their children, from the most famous vineyards of Europe.  During the day they were able to attend to business, if they had any, and seldom drank anything stronger than ale and beer.  Their breakfasts were light and their lunches simple.  Living much in the open air, and fond of the pleasures of the chase, they were generally healthy and robust.  The prevailing disease which crippled them was gout; but this was owing to champagne and burgundy rather than to brandy and turtle-soups, for at that time no Englishman of rank dreamed that he could dine without wine.  William Pitt, it is said, found less than three bottles insufficient for his dinner, when he had been working hard.

Among them all there was great outward reverence for the Church, and few missed its services on Sundays, or failed to attend family prayers in their private chapels as conducted by their chaplains, among whom probably not a Dissenter could be found in the whole realm.  Both Catholics and Dissenters were alike held in scornful contempt or indifference, and had inferior social rank.  On the whole, these aristocrats were a decorous class of men, though narrow, bigoted, reserved, and proud, devoted to pleasure, idle, extravagant, and callous to the wrongs and miseries of the poor.  They did not insult the people by arrogance or contumely, like the old Roman nobles; but they were not united to them by any other ties than such as a master would feel for his slaves; and as slaves are obsequious to their masters, and sometimes loyal, so the humbler classes (especially in the country) worshipped the ground on which these magnates walked.  “How courteous the nobles are!” said a wealthy plebeian manufacturer to me once, at Manchester.  “I was to show my mill to Lord Ducie, and as my carriage drove up I was about to mount the box with the coachman, but my lord most kindly told me to jump in.”

So much for the highest class of all in England, about the year 1815.  Suppose the attention of the traveller were now turned to the legislative halls, in which public affairs were discussed, particularly to the House of Commons, supposed to represent the nation.  He would have seen five or six hundred men, in plain attire, with their hats on, listless and inattentive, except when one of their leaders was making a telling speech against some measure proposed by the opposite party,—­and nearly all measures were party measures.  Who were these favored representatives?  Nearly all of them were the sons or brothers or cousins or political friends of the class to which I have just alluded, with here and there a baronet or powerful county squire or eminent lawyer or wealthy manufacturer