Conversation succeeded, by galvanic jerks and spasmodic starts--a conversation that Lord Castleton contrived to tug so completely out of poor Sir Sedley's ordinary course of small and polished small-talk, that that charming personage, accustomed, as he well deserved, to be Coryphæus at his own table, was completely silenced. With his light reading, his rich stores of anecdote, his good-humoured knowledge of the drawing-room world, he had scarce a word that would fit into the great, rough, serious matters which Lord Castleton threw upon the table, as he nibbled his toast. Nothing but the most grave and practical subjects of human interest seemed to attract this future leader of mankind. The fact is that Lord Castleton had been taught everything that relates to _property_--(a knowledge which embraces a very wide circumference.) It had been said to him "You will be an immense proprietor--knowledge is essential to your self-preservation. You will be puzzled, bubbled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or defended, impoverished or increased. You have a vast stake in the country--you must learn all the interests of Europe--nay, of the civilised world--for those interests react on the country, and the interests of the country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the Marquis of Castleton." Thus the state of the Continent--the policy of Metternich--the condition of the Papacy--the growth of Dissent--the proper mode of dealing with the general spirit of Democracy, which was the epidemic of European monarchies--the relative proportions of the agricultural and manufacturing population--corn-laws, currency, and the laws that regulate wages--a criticism on the leading speakers of the House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of fattening cattle--the introduction of flax into Ireland--emigration--the condition of the poor--the doctrines of Mr Owen--the pathology of potatoes; the connexion between potatoes, pauperism, and patriotism; these, and suchlike stupendous subjects for reflection--all branching, more or less intricately, from the single idea of the Castleton property--the young lord discussed and disposed of in half-a-dozen prim, poised sentences--evincing, I must say in justice, no inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than from so gorgeous a lily of the field. Of a less man, certainly, one would have said--"Cleverish, but a prig;" but there really was something so respectable in a man born to such fortunes, and having nothing to do but to bask in the sunshine, voluntarily taking such pains with himself, and condescending to identify his own interests--the interests of the Castleton property--with the concerns of his lesser