impending evil by, not it would seem a gentle hint under the table. It had for many years of Mr. Salter's life been his boast that he had earned every shilling of his own fortune. "Any fool might belong to an old family," he would say, "but a man deserved credit, he thought, who could make a new one;" which as we have already hinted he was determined to do, by heaping all his wealth on the noble Marquis. On Mr. Salter's first coming to Cheltenham, however, his daughters had prevailed on him, much against his will, to be silent on this favourite topic; while they had flourished away from morning till night about family—respectable family—highly respectable family—old family—ancient family; till at length, by dint of retrograde movements, they had arrived, for aught we know, at coming in with the conqueror. But, alas, about this time Lady Flamborough jilted, and Ladies Whaleworthy and Shawbridge cut poor Mr. Salter, and so put him out of humour with all sorts of quality, as he called them, that he derived a species of consolation from suffering the full tide of his old notions to overflow once more both his soul and his conversation. In vain, therefore, was Miss Salter's hint, as well as many subsequent interruptions. "When I began the world," he recommenced, "the young man in the song who had but one sixpence was better off than I was. My father came by his death in a colliery you see in Cumberland, and left my poor mother with six of us upon the parish. I was big enough at the time, I remember, to lead a cart, so was apprenticed to a farmer, who moving some years after to a farm in Ayrshire, took me with him. There I picked up the knowledge of Scotch farming that afterwards made my fortune, and brought me a wife into the bargain, who, were she living, good woman, wouldn't believe her own eyes, that that there fine gentleman, and these here fine ladies were her own born children! Look here to be sure," he continued, pointing to Miss Salter's ornaments, "such chains, and rings, and bracelets, and nonsense; and if you'll believe me, gentlemen, the first pair of shoes ever her mother had on her feet I bought for her at Maybole fair, in Ayrshire. As for ornaments, we were married with a rush ring, and all the household furniture we possessed was a chaff-bed."

"Well, Mr. Salter," said Sir William, "I can only say that times are greatly changed for the better, and you have yourself to thank for it."

"That's what I say, sir," cried Salter, striking his clenched hand on the table till he made the glasses ring. "Let me see the man that has done so much out of so small a beginning. My son will have as fine an estate as any gentleman in the country, and as fine a house upon it as any nobleman. And if the family is new, why so is the property, and likely, therefore, like a new coat, to give some wear, which is more than some of the old ones will do," he added, winking, and looking exceedingly wise as he laughed at his own wit. The mortified young ladies here rose, and tossing their heads and biting their lips, took their departure.

"Nothing would serve my daughters, when first we come to this vanity-fair," continued Mr. Salter, "but they must pass themselves off for ladies of high family, forsooth, and behave with impertinence to their betters, till they got themselves blown and cut too, as all that sail under false colours deserve to be. But let a man, I say, come forward with nothing but the truth in his mouth, and who shall despise him for having made his way in the world by honest industry?"

Mr. Salter's guests assented, in words at least, to his proposition, and thus encouraged, he proceeded, "A man who has had his own and his children's bred to get, may not have had much time, to be sure, ither for book-larning or bow-making, and may not, therefore, be over good company neither for your schollar nor your fine gentleman; but what e that; there are plenty neither wiser nor genteeler than himself, why shouldn't he be happy with them! As for his children, why, if he can afford to make them independent, let him give them, as I have done, plenty of schooling with it, and so make them company for any man."

Geoffery here interrupted the discussion by rising to take his departure, pleading the ball at his aunt's, which he must attend, while Sir William Orm, finding there would be no chance of renewing the whist party, inveigled away the Marquis to the hazard-table. Mr. Salter, thus left to himself, was soon fast asleep in his chair; and his usual nap being prolonged by his unusual potations, it was a couple of hours before he found his way into the drawing-room. The disappointment of his daughters, on his making his appearance alone, may be imagined, when it is duly considered that they had waited tea, though we cannot say patiently, till near one o'clock in the morning for the gentlemen, of whose early retreat they were not aware.

So much for feeding illbred men of fashion, in the hope of securing in return what they have not to give—their politeness. After, therefore, expressing warmly their disapprobation of such rudeness, the Misses Salter had nothing for it but to retire to rest, venting on each other, 'till sleep closed their lips, the aggregate of spleen collected throughout the day from so many fruitful sources. Yet here were people whose more than common prosperity might have brought with it more than common happiness in their own line, had not silly ambition and idle vanity poisoned every fountain of attainable enjoyment, and created an inconvenient thirst for the springs of a land of which they were never likely to become naturalized citizens.

The Misses Salter had always heard their poor father say, that he had spared no expense in their education; they knew that they possessed accomplishments, and prided themselves on remembering what they had been made to read at school. But they knew not, for it came not within their sphere to know, that there is an education of early habits effecting the minutiæ of outward bearing, and acquired it would seem, by the unconscious mimicry of infancy, the stamp of which no after-school discipline can yet either erase or bestow; and still less were they capable of comprehending, that there is a further education of refining sympathies and ennobling sentiments which, while as children of Adam we all share one first nature, bestows, in combination with that already named of early habits, a sort of second nature, on the privileged few, who from generation to generation have been reared, like exotics, amid the beautiful and beautifying blossoms of delicacy and feeling, sheltered from the rough winds of coarseness, the blighting atmosphere of necessity, and the cold ungenial climate of that almost justifiable selfishness unavoidably learned by those who have not only their own, but their family's imperious wants to supply by their individual anxious exertions.

Thus it is that shades of thinking, of feeling, and of judging, scarcely sufficiently palpable to form subjects of instruction, pass, unintentionally imparted, unconsciously imbibed, from father to son, from mother to daughter, till education in this enlarged sense, in other words refinement, becomes a kind of hereditary distinction, which must be possessed for several succeeding generations before it can well exist in its highest perfection.

That these are very sufficient reasons why the various classes of society, for the comfort of all parties, should keep in their respective spheres, till gradually assimilated by time and circumstances, no one who knows the world can deny; the error lies in making pride instead of expediency the ground of separation,—the sin, in suffering the manifestations of that pride to be offensive.

CHAPTER VI.

Lady Arden stood with Alfred receiving the still arriving guests, while Willoughby was just leading away Lady Caroline to commence dancing. He trembled as she took his arm, some of the uncomfortable doubts expressed in his last interview with