In that proportion are those men unprincipled who speak of the English nobility as an indolent class--detached from public employments, and taking neither share nor interest in the public service. Such representations, where they are not deliberate falsehoods, point to a fact which is not uncommon; from the limited number of our nobility, and consequently the rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury, compose the romantic type which the delineator figures to his mind; and at length it becomes evident to any man, who has an experimental knowledge of this order, that probably the ancient Persian satraps, or the omrahs of Hindostan, have much more truly been operatively present to the describers than any thing ancient or modern amongst the realities of England. A candid person, who wishes to estimate the true, and not the imaginary nobles of England, will perceive one fact through the public journals, viz. that no class takes a more active share in that sort of the public business which naturally commends itself to their support. At least one-half of the deliberative meetings connected with the innumerable charities of London, very many of the public dinners by which such charities are promoted or commemorated, obtain the benevolent aid of noblemen as chairmen and presidents. Provincial assemblies for the same purposes, and, still more frequently, assemblies growing out of the endless political questions incident to a nation in our circumstances, receive the same influential countenance. These labours, by no means slight, added to the evening Parliamentary attendance through half the year, and the morning attendance on Parliamentary committees, together with the magisterial duties of many lords-lieutenant, sufficiently attest that in this point of public duties, (exercised without fee or compensation,) our own nobility is the only one in Europe having almost any connexion at all with the national service, except through the army. Some of this small body are pretty constantly attached to the cabinet; others act as ambassadors, as under-secretaries, or as colonial governors. And so far are they from wishing, apparently, to limit the field for their own exertions, that the late Dukes of Manchester and Richmond spontaneously extended it, by giving the countenances of their high stations to the governments of Canada, and even of Jamaica. A marquis of ancient family has lately accepted the government of Madras; and gradually, as our splendid colonies expand their proportions, it is probable that many more of them will benefit at intervals, (in their charities and public works,) from