"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 watchhouse 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 show 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 wetnurse 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. the spirit of the times levels him almost to the common. 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 halfdozen. Unless more ships are built for Young Lords, they must even tarry in the shade; must be still commanded, when they would fain command. Again, 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. The Young Lord turns his looks towards Westminster. He will practise the law. He looks into the courts: what clouds of wigs! How many hands yet innocent of briefs! Yea, every seat is filled with candidates for fees, and there is no abidingplace for the Young Lord. What, then, is to become of our young, our most interesting subject? Are all the avenues to fame and profit closed against him; or, at least, are they so beset by suitors that it is to lose all distinction to mingle among them? What, then, is left for our Young Lord? The reader is to be admonished that we would present society in its inevitable advancement. We do not picture the present Young Lord in this utter state of destitution; we do not assert this to be his case in 1839, but assuredly as his certain perplexing condition as the world wears on; as abuses, that is, privileges hitherto assured to him are amended, swept away by the spirit of the times. "Young ravens must be fed." Young Lords must be nourished; and when all the thousand tails whereupon Young Lords exist are cut off by the fell shears of utility, either they must displace their brethren, the happy first-born enjoying all the milk of primogeniture from their feeding-places, insisting on an equal share of goods, or they must descend a step in the social scale, and ruffle it with the vulgar. He has still the But the Young Lord will not so condescend. pride of birth of ancestry; is still linked with the representative of his family; still has reflected upon him the cold lustre of his line. What, then, is to be the condition of the younger sons of pride and rank? What, in the social revolution, silently but steadily approaching, what course is left to them? We see hope-yes, we descry land. New Zealand-world of promise and of beauty !—rises upon the destitute. The Young Lord has still an outlet from crowded England-from the multitude amidst whom he is undistinguished, to a land where he may wax great and strong by the exercise of those very energies which he may not, from pride and prejudice, put forth at home. The position we have taken may, to the unreflecting to those who see in the social state of the present day the type of that to come-appear Utopian, foolish; insulting to the illustrious persons to whom the argument applies. And yet the very progress of things indicates the issue. Saint Giles has sent forth his emigrants, and, in due season, so will Saint James. The ship may not yet be built; nay, the acorns from which the timbers shall be grown, not yet in the earth; but the prophet sees her dropping down the Thames, and sees aboard her freight of younger sons. "The vanes sit steady Upon the abbey towers. The silver lightnings In the meantime, the Young Lord is the nursling of fortune. What knows he of the wants, the strugglings, the sympathies of life? It is ten to one that almost the whole purpose of his education is to render him indifferent to the great interests of humanity, inculcating within him an easy selfishness that reduces the whole world to his immediate circle; that makes him look upon all without that magic ring as nought. At college he takes honours as a matter of course, whilst the plebeian labours for them. Even in academic groves, he becomes fortified in those prejudices which separate him from the great mass of his fellowmen. Whilst ostensibly giving ear to "divine philosophy," he is the frequent scholar of riot and misrule. Bigotry finds him her aptest pupil; a ready soldier for her hoary rights; the panting follower of her low behests. In her cause he can wield a cudgel, and out-bellow Stentor: for her beloved sake he blows a cat-call, and knocks down his man. Do you doubt this, reader? To Oxford, then, or Cambridge: go, and be converted. The Young Lord of our day has, it must be owned, changed from his predecessor of fifty years ago. He is not the same hero of fortune, who, with impunity, might cane his footman, and kick his creditor. He is, by public opinion, put upon his good behaviour; and so, generally conforms to all the decencies. There are, to be sure, exceptions; but we will not dwell upon them. There was a time when the Young Lord could take shelter from personal insignificance in his title; the nobleman could, as Sheridan has expressed it, “hide his head in a coronet ;” now it affords no concealment; but, on the contrary, is a mark, drawing the thoughts of men to test the value of the possessor. The Young Lord must march with the times, or must be content to be left behind with the stragglers. This is the more incumbent on him as the old resources of his predecessors become every day less; more urgent, when every day serves to show the different destinies of lords who, like Brougham's pigs, are-lords born to teats, and lords born to tails. THE UNDERTAKER. No man (that is, no tradesman) has a more exquisite notion of the outward proprieties of life, of all its external decencies, luxuries, and holiday show-making, than your Undertaker. With him, death is not death; but, on the contrary, a something to be handsomely appointed and provided for; to be approached with the deference paid by the trader to the buyer, and treated with an attention, a courtesy, commensurate with the probability of profit. To the Undertaker, death is not a ghastly, noisome thing; a hideous object to be thrust into the earth; the companion of corruption; the fellow of the worm: not it! Death comes to the Undertaker, especially if he bury in high life, a melancholy coxcomb, curious in the web of his winding-sheet, in the softness of his last pillow, in the crimson or violet velvet that shall cover his oaken couch, and in more than all, particular in the silver gilt nails, the plates, and handles, that shall decorate it. A sense of profit in the Undertaker wholly neutralises the terrible properties of death; for, to him, what is another corpse but another customer? "Of course, sir,” says Mandrake, taking orders for a funeral,— “Of course, sir, you'll have feathers ?” "Indeed, I—I see no use in feathers," replies the bereaved party, whose means are scarcely sufficient for the daily necessities of the living; "no use at all." "No feathers, sir!" says Mandrake, with a look of pitying wonder. "Why, excuse me, sir, but-really-you would bury a servant without feathers." "Well, if you think them necessary," "Necessary! No respectable person can be buried without feathers," says Mandrake; and (wise dealer!) he touches the chord of worldly pride, and feathers make part of the solemnity. "Then, sir, for mutes: you have mutes, doubtless?" "I never could understand what service they were,” is the answer. "Oh, dear sir!" cries Mandrake; "not understand! Consider |