the inhuman mother has refused the bounty of a bosom, a Walpole has benignly given the fatness of a tail. The state, with Lady Macbeth, may cry,

And the world has borne testimony to the plumpness of the nursling, to the fulness of its cheeks, the brawn of its thighs, and the loudness of its crying. History has shewn the state to be a most kind wet nurse to deserted noble babes: so kind, that, considering them in the maturity of their powers, it is sometimes difficult to decide who have been most fortunate, the lords of the family teat, or the lords of the Treasury tail.

However, we live in eventful times, in days of daring change, of most profane revolution. The Young Lord of the nineteenth century is a much less enviable person than the Young Lord of fifty years ago. If he be the firstborn, with all the advantages of that happy state, the task set him by the hard and grudging spirit of the age is far more irksome, far more difficult, than that conned by his grandfather. His title as a title has not the weight it had; it has lost, too, something of the music of its ring upon the leathern ears of a utilitarian generation. Hard times for Young Lords, when they may not leisurely saunter along the path of worldly honour, lest their heels be wounded by the advancing toes of the viler orders!

Time was when the lord exalted genius; when the poet was a literary serf, and wore the collar of the nobleman. The bard of high fancies, noble aspirations, was protected by the rank of nobility, and the bay, it was thought, could only flourish near the strawberry leaves. The poet had succeeded the household jester, and was considered the especial property of the patron. His lordship's name was to be held a potent and wondrous idol in the dedication page of the bard, who was to kneel, and duck beneath, and to utter a strange jargon of idolatry and self-abasement. The poet was to clasp his hands in worship of the rewarding genius, and his lips, touched with Apollo's fire, were to kiss the dust from the shoe-leather of his literary life-giver. The sacrifices paid to the Ape with the Golden Tooth are harmless ceremonies to the offerings of genius rendered, within the last hundred years, to the patron-lord. Genius, however, no longer wears the livery of the nominally great, and the lord, the mere lord, has lost his hymning bondsman.

The Young Lord of the present time (we mean, the fortunate firstborn), stripped as he is of many of the sweet prerogatives of a

former age, has still a deal of good provided for him by the gods. Though his title has not the same music, the like note of terror in its sound, that by turns delighted and awe-struck the vassals of other days, there are still broad lands, waving forests, inexhaustible mines, all in perspective his. Though he may have the ears of Midas, still he shall have his wealth; and if he may not, like his ancestors, hang at his own sweet will, an offending serf at the hall-door, it is still a part of his birthright to make gins to catch the wicked. In this day, however, to be anything he must be something more than a lord; if not, his title is but a glittering extinguisher of the man.

Come we now to the younger brother-the Young Lord, still more hardly treated by the unjust prejudices of the present hard dealing generation. He may, indeed, eschewing a stern, laborious ambition, that promises the reward of the student and the statesman, surrender himself to the blandishments of the race-course, and nowand-then give his system a fillip with the ancient, time-honoured sport of cock-fighting. If he be no longer by his station the exclusive patron of literature, he may take under his worshipful protection a wonderful rat-killing terrier :-still, there is something in his name that sheds lustre on a badger-bait, and gives no small importance to a hopping-match. Small clubs still woo him as a grace and ornament, and very small men are, in their own esteem, made considerably bigger by his acquaintance. The lord, as a lord, is still a man of topping height amongst dwarfs; still an oracle to the witless and the dumb. He has been known, in the fulness of his condescension, to drive stage coaches; and, keeping up the drollery of the disguise, has touched his hat to the passengers, thankfully receiving half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences.

The Young Lord may, at times, with nothing else to dispose of -with neither talents for public trust, nor industry nor habits for private dealing-take his title to market, and with it turn a profitable penny. Eastward of Temple Bar, there still are bidders. Although the prosaic spirit of the times has considerably affected the sale of Young Lords amongst the daughters of the counting-house, a title, even if it be not recommended by the most seductive manners, the handsomest figure, and the whitest teeth, finds purchasers in the oriental districts. Like Mrs. Peachem's coloured handkerchiefs, the Young Lord may go off at Redriff. He may take this credit to himself; that he has ennobled Barbara Wiggins, the youngest daughter of Ralph Wiggins, tallow-chandler; that he has introduced to the court, and to all the court's great glories, Miss Moidore, the heiress of old Moidore, money-lender and contractor.

Westward, the Young Lord is a dangerous person, to be especially watched by prudent mothers. He is, indeed, of the same family with his elder brother; has admittance to the self-same circle; is, probably, the handsomest of the stock; and therefore, being a younger brother, a person to be more vigilantly considered. The Young Lord moves among fashionable heiresses to the liveliest distress of their disinterested natural guardians: his station gives him every opportunity of rendering himself the most delightful of men to the susceptible young, whilst the poverty of his fortunes makes him detestable to the reflecting old. His very look has in it an invitation to elope; he cannot whisper, that he does not put the fatal question. These are the fears of the lynx-eyed mother, who very properly descants on the profligacy of the younger brother, of his habits of play, his debts, his horrible liaisons, his wickedness in general; forgetting not to cast all his faults into deeper shadow by contrasting them with the manifold virtues and very many gentlemanly qualities possessed by his dear, his excellent relation, the family heir.

There is, however, an easy road to distinction for the Young Lord he has still within his reach the means of notoriety, with the further gratification of proving to the scoffing vulgar that he is, even in these days, privileged in his enjoyments; that his ebullitions of a warm temperament are more considerately judged than the vagaries of common folks; and that when called to account for his buoyant eccentricity, he is "used all gently," and, on the part of his censors, with due allowance for his social standing. The Young Lord despoils many doors of their knockers, and there is a whim, a novelty in the achievement which makes it "light to Cassio." He breaks a few lamps, and is fined forty shillings: he pays the money with the fortitude of a martyr, and, with a smile, asks his judge if that is all the damage. The judge nods assent; forty shillings from the purse of our Young Lord being, in the punishment inflicted upon him by such a mulct, equal to two months' imprisonment to a poorer wag, with the trifling supplement of hard labour. Thus it is; unless a man have a Young Lord for his acquaintance, and can use a crowbar or fling a stone under the patronage of the aristocracy, he must pay most disproportionately for the recreation. This is obviously wrong, and, in our humble opinion, quite in opposition to the meaning of the excellent King John when, one fine day, he signed and sealed at Runnymede.

The Young Lord is sometimes the centre of an admiring circle; the patron of a knot of eccentric spirits, living on the hem of

society, who are yet convinced that the light of the fashionable world is reflected upon them from the countenance of their noble "friend." Under his auspices, in his name, they assemble at a pothouse which, dignified by such a gathering, becomes a tavern; and with true devotion, eat and drink their fealty to the Lord of Broken Panes. He sets the fashion of commonplace debauchery, and has a thousand followers: clerks, shopmen, and apprentices, in humble imitation of their great original model,

"Break the lamps, beat watchmen,
Then stagger to some punk."

The Young Lord, by his own sufferings, makes a watch-house a place of sport for humbler revellers; and fined for being drunk, by the chivalrous air with which he flings down five shillings, recommends intoxication as the best of all possible frailties to his worshipful admirers. To beard a magistrate is to shew fine blood; to damn the newspapers, and all their daily histories, high moral valour. Thus the Young Lord has still some influence on social life-still makes his impress on a plastic generation.

We live, however, in times unpropitious to the successful development of romance. Every day the distance between the noble brawler and the plebeian blackguard is lessened, and we know not how soon the Young Lord may, in public opinion, toe the same line with the young cobbler; that is, when both engaged in the same midnight mirth, when both animated by the same dignified purpose. This is a hard truth for the Pullus Jovis of the nineteenth century, who may accuse his stars that he fell not on a more feudal age; that, coming late into this revolutionary world, he must even submit to an ordeal unknown to his grandfathers. But so it is. Public opinion is the terrible Inquisition of modern times; and those who, in a former age, were by their birth and office held the elect and chosen, are unceremoniously dragged forth, questioned, and doomed to an auto da fé. We have fallen upon bitter days.

It is next to be considered (policy, humanity presses upon us the necessity of grave cogitation) what is to be done with Young Lords -with those who in a happier time would have been born not to their fathers and mothers, but to the people; with those who, deprived of a teat at home, would have been put out to wet-nurse on the nation. There was a time when the public treasury had many tails; but alas! alas! murderous innovation, with a heart of flint, has cut them off one by one, and already are others marked and doomed for excision.

What shall become of the younger branches of the aristocracy, since they may no longer, to any number, be planted in the garden of the Hesperides, laid out and tended at the public cost?

The Young Lord (be it still remembered, that we speak of second sons, and so downwards) looks around him in this hard, grudging nineteenth century; surveys every yard of once merry England, and, to him, yearning for the sweet fruits of former days, finds the land barren!

The Young Lord peeps into the church. Alas! though a few good stalls still remain, the struggle to get into one of them is made fierce by many candidates. And then, the sweet green nooks, the rich pastures, the many pleasant places, consecrated for an age to the uses of the sons of orthodoxy, are, in a measure, thrown open, impoverished, made desolate, compared to the exclusiveness and plenty of the good old religious times. There are still, it must be confessed, many delicious corners, a thousand savoury morsels for the occupancy and palates of the sons of the church; but alack! the crowd elbowing for the worldly paradise,-the host, with open mouths, gaping for the food! The Young Lord can no longer lounge into the very penetralia of the costly edifice; its manna is not to be had for the mere gathering; he is hustled by a mob of lords as good as he; and hands as white and gentle as his own, claw and scramble for the blessed aliment.

The Young Lord would try his fortunes on the deep. Again, the spirit of the times levels him almost to the common. There was a day when epaulettes were to be had for votes; and the "aye" of the papa would bring down decorative honour on the shoulder of the son; when grey heads were common among plebeian midshipmen; as common as downy chins among lieutenants and commanders; when, lucky was the child whose father was one of twenty freeholders, for his merits, made known to the minister, would be exalted. Such days are dead and gone: the Young Lord looks into the gun-room and the cock-pit, and in those chosen spots, where, in former times, one Young Lord sufficed to shed a grace and dignity-there are lords by the half-dozen. Unless more ships are built for Young Lords, they must even tarry in the shade; must be still commanded, when they would fain command.

The Young Lord, disappointed in the church, disgusted with the fleet, looks towards the army. Peace, however, inglorious peace, throngs the service with gentle spirits of his order; he sees a crowd of lords, and, so long has the sword slumbered in the scabbard, not a sprig of laurel amongst the multitude.