with the ignorant laity, yea, even thundering in the pulpit, see, in heart and soul, ye sin no worse than the lowly, ignorant Pew-Opener.

We have read the discourse against the vanities of the world, as preached by the white-palmed bishop; and we have read his three hours' speech made two nights before on the Beer Act. Verily, the two compositions did somewhat remind us of the memoranda of the worthy Mrs. Spikenard.

THE YOUNG LORD.

“WHEN a sow farrows," writes Henry Lord Brougham, in his “Dissertations,” illustrative of Paley, "each pig”—by the action of the abdominal muscles, being literally thrown upon the world-"instantly runs up to one of the teats, which he ever after regards as his own peculiar property." So far, so well, with the first-born pigs; but his lordship continues:- When more pigs than teats are produced, the latter ones run to the tail of some of the others, and suck till they die of inanition."

Never before were the advantages and injuries of primogeniture more strikingly, and withal more affectingly, displayed. Who could have believed that a parallel was to be drawn between peers and pigs? And yet the Chinese, a philosophic, farseeing people, must have had some inkling of the curious fact; for, in their harmonious and mysterious tongue, "the word 'shu,' says Dr. Mason Good, "means both a lord and a swine." It is, however, barely just to add, that this irreverence of synonym is purely the fault of the Chinese radicals; although, in the whole Celestial language, they "do not exceed four hundred and eleven."

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The reader, after the authority we have cited, must admit that pigs are of two kinds : pigs born to teats, and pigs born to tails!

(Let us not be mistaken: far be it from us to mix together in an unseemly crowd sucking pigs with sucking peers. We hope to be understood as speaking philosophically, and not profanely.)

Young Lords, like young porkers, are of two kinds : lords born to teats, and lords born to tails. Here, however (and for the sake of our common humanity it is a great happiness to know it), the parallel ends. Lords, though the twentieth of the same house, do not die of inanition; for though aristocracy has but one teat, the state has many most nutritious tails. The first-born tugs all his life at the family breast: the younger Lords Charleses and Lords Augustuses have, time out of mind, been wet-nursed at the

* See "Dissertations on Subjects of Science," vol. i. p. 208.

public purse. When 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,

"I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the lord that milks me!"

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 shown 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 Exchequer 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 eighty years ago. If he be the first-born, 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 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 first-born), 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 harddealing 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 now-and-then give his system a fillip with the ancient, timehonoured 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 countinghouse, 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, tallowchandler; 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 espe

cially 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.

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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