that crawl on the earth; and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding." The exclusive and almost feudal character of the English peerage was destroyed, finally and of set purpose, by Pitt when he declared that every man who had an estate of ten thousand a year had a right to be a peer. In Lord Beaconsfield's words, "He created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-rate squires and fat graziers. He caught them in the alleys of Lombard Street, and clutched them from the counting-houses of Cornhill." This democratization of the peerage was accompanied by great modifications of pomp and stateliness in the daily life of the peers. In the eighteenth century the Duke and Duchess of Atholl were always served at their own table before their guests, in recognition of their royal rank as Sovereigns of the Isle of Man; and the Duke and Duchess of Argyll observed the same courteous usage for no better reason than because they liked it. The "Household Book" of Alnwick Castle records the amplitude and complexity of the domestic hierarchy which ministered to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland; and at Arundel and Belvoir, and Trentham and Wentworth, the magnates of the peerage lived in a state little less than regal. Seneschals and gentlemen-ushers, ladies-in-waiting and pages-of-the-presence adorned noble as well as royal households. The private chaplain of a great Whig duke, within the recollection of people whom I have known, used to preface his sermon with a prayer for the nobility, and "especially for the noble duke to whom I am indebted for my scarf"--the badge of chaplaincy--accompanying the words by a profound bow toward his Grace's pew. The last "running footman" pertained to "Old Q."--the notorious Duke of Queensberry, who died in 1810. Horace Walpole describes how, when a guest playing cards at Woburn Abbey dropped a silver piece on the floor, and said, "Oh, never mind; let the Groom of the Chambers have it," the Duchess replied, "Let the carpet-sweeper have it; the Groom of the Chambers never takes anything but gold." These grotesque splendours of domestic living went out with the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson, who died in 1784, had already noted their decline. There was a general approach towards external equalization of ranks, and that approach was accompanied by a general diffusion of material enjoyment. The luxury of the period was prodigal rather than refined. There lies before me as I write a tavern bill for a dinner for seven persons in the year 1751. I reproduce the items verbally and literally, and certainly the bill of fare is worth studying as a record of gastronomical exertion on a heroic scale:--