paratively practical and prosaic times, was not always up to the noble marquis's mind and taste. The premier of the day, for instance, with whom he must needs come in contact about this coveted honour, albeit, happily for the marquis's cause and prospects, of Conservative politics, was, as the marquis described him, one Smith, who was not only destitute of the slightest particle of nobility in his family, but who, even worse still, seemed indifferent on that point, and whose immediate ancestry, to use the marquis's dignified family-like expression, for even but a single step backwards, had actually kept a shop.
To such a premier, then, he, a peer of the realm, must needs address himself. The said premier was, first of all, a man of business; and, in his cordial reception of the noble marquis, he had at least one eye upon the large family estates, and the number of votes that might possibly come of them in times of need. But there was still one difficulty attending the noble marquis's application for promotion. What were the merits? What could the willing-enough premier plead, to a critically curious, and not seldom rather troublesome public, as warrant for the required step?
The marquis had to suppress, as he best could, his indignant sense of this modern method with the noble and titled classes of society. Were these honours then to be trucked and trafficked for, as though peerages were the common articles of a market? Merits, forsooth! He had thought that a sufficient merit might have been his being already a marquis, in claiming to be a duke. In the end. Premier Smith, it is to be feared, was "the unjust judge" of that occasion with
