They did disappear accordingly, and thenceforward we started as, in many respects, a renovated race; while other countries, in view of such results, acted more or less upon our example. An appreciably greater health and vigour pervaded all scientific, business, and general life, which told marvellously on our national progress. I often wonder even now at the busy spectacle around me, for doubtless we still benefit from the renovating effects of that great movement. Take my worthy old father, for instance, who in spite of nearly a century of years, is yet as early and as hard at business as the youngest of us, and earning always a great deal more than he spends. May Heaven long preserve—may Heaven, as I dutifully repeat, prosper him to the uttermost!
Amongst the lingering survivors of those old social remnants, whose final extinction we have just recorded was the last representative of one of the great families of the old times and systems now passed away. This family was that of the Selphnils. In its high days of those old times, there had been Dukes of Selphnil, with great property inheritance; but when primogeniture and entail laws and other artificial family props had been done away with, and, as the new rule, every one had to stand or fall by his own qualities and merits, the Selphnil family fell all behind in the common race, and, sad to say, its last representative died in the Public Charity. All that remained of the old grandeur was his name. Even that the neighbours had inappreciatively abbreviated; but while they called
