Thirdly, for all populous and highly civilized nations, it is an indirect necessity made known in a thousand ways, that some adequate control should preside over their spirit of manners.  This can be effected only through a court and a body of nobles.  And thence it arises, that, in our English public intercourse, through every class, (even the lowest of the commercial,) so much of respectful gravity and mutual consideration is found.  Now, therefore, as the means of maintaining in strength this aristocratic influence, we request every thoughtful man to meditate upon the following proposition.  The class even of our gentry breeds a body of high and chivalrous feeling; and very much so by unconscious sympathy with an order above themselves.  But why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen?  It is because, in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought to be separated from the strife of the world.  The fretful collision with rivalship and angry tempers, insensibly modifies the demeanour of every man.  But the British nobleman, intrenched in wealth, enjoys an immunity from this irritating discipline.  He is able to act by proxy:  and all services of unpleasant contest he devolves upon agents.  To have a class in both sexes who toil not, neither do they spin—­is the one conditio sine qua non for a real nobility.

Fourthly as the leaders in a high morality of honour, and a jealous sense of the obligation attached to public engagements, our nobility has tightened the bonds of national sensibility beyond what is always perceived.  “This is high matter,” as Burke says in a parallel case; and we barely touch it.  We shall content ourselves with asking—­Could the American frauds in the naval war, calling sixty-four-gun ships by the name of frigates, have been suffered in England?  Could the American doctrine of repudiation have prospered with us?  Yet are the Americans Englishmen, wanting only a nobility.

The times are full of change:  it is through the Conservative body itself that certain perils are now approaching patrician order:  if that perishes, England passes into a new moral condition, wanting all the protections of the present.

* * * * *

JACK STUART’S BET ON THE DERBY, AND HOW HE PAID HIS LOSSES.

Cotherstone came in amid great applause, and was the winner of the poorest Derby ever known.  Whilst acclamation shook the spheres, and the corners of mouths were pulled down, and betting-books mechanically pulled out—­while success made some people so benevolent that they did not believe in the existence of poverty any where, and certainly not in the distress of the wretched-looking beggar entreating a penny—­whilst all these things were going on, champagne corks flying, the sun shining, toasts resounding, and a perfect hubbub in full activity on all sides, Jack Stuart drew me aside towards the carriage, and said, “’Pon my word, it must be a cross.  How the deuce could one horse beat the whole field?”