see, with my mind’s eye, a statue of Dunsford raised in Tollerporcorum.  You smile, I observe; but it is the smile of ignorance, for let me tell you, it is of the first importance not to be born vaguely, as in London, or in some remote country-house.  If you cannot, however, be born properly, contrive at least to be connected with some small sect or community, who may consider your renown as part of their renown, and be always ready to favour and defend you.

After this promising introduction Ellesmere goes on to propound views which in an extraordinary way combine real good sense and sharp worldly wisdom with a parade of all sorts of mean shifts and contemptible tricks where-by to take advantage of the weakness, folly, and wickedness of human nature.  Very characteristically he delights in thinking how he is shocking and disgusting poor Mildred:  of course Dunsford and Milverton understand him.  And the style is as characteristic as the thought.  It is unquestionably Ellesmere to whose essay we are listening; Milverton could not and would not have produced such a discourse.  We remember to have read in a review, published several years since, of the former series of Friends in Council, that it was judicious in the author of that work, though introducing several friends as talking together, to represent all the essays as written by one individual; because, although he could keep up the individuality of the speakers through a conversation, it was doubtful whether he could have succeeded in doing so through essays purporting to. be written by each of them.  We do not know whether the author ever saw the challenge thus thrown down to him:  but it is certain that in the present series he has boldly attempted the thing, and thoroughly succeeded.  And it may be remarked that not one of Ellesmere’s propositions can be regarded as mere vagaries—­every one of them contains truth, though truth put carefully in the most disagreeable and degrading way.  Who does not know how great an element of success it is to belong to a sect or class which regard your reputation as identified with their own, and cry you up accordingly?  It is to be admitted that there is the preliminary difficulty of so far overcoming individual envies and jealousies as to get your class to accept you as their representative; but once that end is accomplished the thing is done.  As to being born north of the Tweed, a Scotch Lord Chancellor and a Scotch Bishop of London are instructive instances.  And however much Scotchmen may abuse one another at home, it cannot be denied that all Scotchmen feel it a sacred duty to stand up for every Scotchman who has attained to eminence oeyond the boundaries of his native land.  Scotland, indeed, in the sense in which Ellesmere uses the phrase, is a small community; and a community of very energetic, self-denying, laborious, and determined men, with very many feelings in common which they have in common only with their countrymen, and with an invincible tendency in all times of trouble to remember the old cry of Highlandmen, shoulder to shoulder!  Let the ambitious reader muse on what follows:—­