LECTURE III.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

"Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus, was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind, to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion, and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and honour."-BURKE, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

GENTLEMEN,―The subject of my lecture to-night is the House of Lords-that patrician assembly the members of which constitute the most brilliant aristocracy in Christendom. And if I detain you here a little while you must excuse me, for if there is one thing an Englishman likes to talk about

more than another, it is about a lord; and as I have to talk to you this evening about not one lord but the whole assembly of lords, it is very natural that such an engrossing topic should run away with me a little. I have no doubt you remember an anecdote, mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson,' of a Dr Oldfield who was always talking about the Duke of Marlborough. One day he came into a coffee-house and said that his grace had spoken in the House of Lords for half an hour. "And what did he say of you, doctor?" said a surgeon present. "Of me? why, nothing," replied the doctor, astonished. "Well then, sir," said the surgeon, "he was very ungrateful, for you could not have spoken a quarter of an hour without saying something of him." The race of Dr Oldfields is by no means. extinct. We all of us know our Dr Oldfield, and we also know how long he will be before he mentions his duke. The truth is, that we Englishmen have a great respect for the Peerage, let us try to hide it ever so closely. Mr Thackeray, who was one of the keenest observers of character, said "that there was not a man in England who would not be proud to walk down Pall Mall arm-in-arm between two dukes." And if our novelists portray life and character as they really exist, we see in their pages

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how dearly Englishmen love a lord, and all that belongs to him. The divinity which Shakespeare says hedges round a king is surely extended to the Peerage also.

Some time ago I made the acquaintance of a distinguished American officer who had fought gallantly in that terrible war against the South, and when peace was restored had come over to England to study our manners and customs. He was a thorough American, full of ideas of equality, and wondered how Englishmen could tolerate such "slick fooleries" as the Peerage and all that kind of thing; but gradually his democratic notions considerably toned down, and he took as kindly to the society of the great as any man I ever met. One day, when I had accused him of becoming a stanch supporter of the aristocracy (for he was always talking about our "British lords," as he called them), he vindicated himself in the following words: "I must own my impressions air somewhat changed since my arrival in this country. The social influence of your Peerage is so strong with all of you that I reckon I'm pretty considerable infected likewise. No matter whether you air Tories or Rads, it's all the same, you're both bit by it. I don't believe the Britisher who says he don't care for your lords.

He may rail at 'em, but it's only the spite of jealousy. Ask him to dine with a duke, and then see what answer he'd give; guess there wouldn't be much need of pressing the invitation. And it can't be otherwise as long as your peers occupy the high social position that they do among you. A lord with you is everything. If a man is related to a lord, he lets me know the fact before I've spoken to him for ten minutes. When I call upon your lovely women, I find the cards of the aristocrats uppermost in their card-baskets. You can't do anything without a lord. You can't get up a society of any sort or natur' without shoving a lord in as its patron or president. You put him into city companies as a director; into hospitals, asylums, bazaars,—into everything. A lord in the chair at a public meeting always draws; and, in fact, as far as my experience goes, I don't know when a British lord don't draw. Such being the case, I suppose I've caught the lord-fever likewise, in order not to be singular. Wal, sir, look at America, where we are all preachin' equality (bar niggers), and abusin' this demoralised speck of land of yours because you don't do as we do; why, if you send us a British lord, the dandies of New York and Boston stare at him as if he were a god, and do all they

WHY WE RESPECT IT.

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can to imitate his dress and his manners; and as for our women, why I guess that they would sooner marry a real live English lord than any man in all the States, Districts, and Territories of North America." And, with certain reservations, I am inclined to believe a good deal of what my American friend said.

Now, as Conservatives we profess openly to have a respect for our aristocracy-a healthy, honest respect, such as no Englishman need be ashamed of. We look upon the distinction of rank and honours as necessary in every well-governed State, in order to reward those who have distinguished themselves, and deserve well of their country. We respect the House of Lords, not because it represents the great bulk of the landed property of the kingdom, but on account of the high personal qualities for which, as a class, its members are eminently distinguished. We believe that for cultivation, refinement, and moral worth, the aristocracy of England is superior

*

* In point of wealth, however, the House of Lords exhibits a standard which cannot be equalled in any other country. Take the Dukes of Northumberland, Devonshire, Sutherland, and Buccleuch, the Marquesses of Westminster and Bute, the Earls of Derby, Lonsdale, Dudley, and Leicester, and Baron Overstone, and where (in the mere matter of wealth) will you find their equals collectively?

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