But alas! what has been said of laws--and I believe it true in most countries, ancient and modern, except England--that they are like cobwebs, which entrap the weak, and yield to the strong and bold, is equally, and perhaps more generally applicable to public opinion. It is a fact, that many of the grandees, and the titled noblesse of this country, derive a large portion of their blood from Jews and Moriscoes. Their pedigree has been traced up to those cankered branches, in a manuscript book, which neither the threats of Government, nor the terrors of the Inquisition, have been able to suppress completely. It is called _Tizon de España_--“the Brand of Spain.” But wealth and power have set opinion at defiance; and while a poor industrious man, humbled by feelings not unlike those of an Indian _Paria_, will hardly venture to salute his neighbour, because, forsooth, his fourth or fifth ancestor fell into the hands of the Inquisition for declining to eat pork--the proud grandee, perhaps a nearer descendant of the Patriarchs, will think himself degraded by marrying the first gentlewoman in the kingdom, unless she brings him _a hat_, in addition to the six or eight which he may be already entitled to wear before the king. But this requires some explanation. The highest privilege of a grandee is that of covering his head before the king. Hence, by two or more _hats_ in a family, it is meant that it has a right, by inheritance, to as many titles of grandeeship. Pride having confined the grandees to intermarriages in their own caste, and the estates and titles being inheritable by females, an enormous accumulation of property and honours has been made in a few hands. The chief aim of every family is constantly to increase this preposterous accumulation. Their children are married, by dispensation, in their infancy, to some great heir or heiress; and such is the multitude of family names and titles which every grandee claims and uses, that if you should look into a simple passport given by the Spanish Ambassador in London, when he happens to be a member of the ancient Spanish families, you will find the whole first page of a large foolscap sheet, employed merely to tell you who the great man is whose signature is to close the whole. As far as vanity alone is concerned, this ambitious display of rank and parentage, might, at this time of day, be dismissed with a smile. But there lurks a more serious evil in the absurd and invidious system so studiously preserved by our first nobility. Surrounded by their own dependents, and avoided by the gentry, who are seldom disposed for an intercourse in which a sense of inferiority prevails, few of the grandees are exempt from the natural consequences of such a life--gross ignorance, intolerable conceit, and sometimes, though seldom, a strong dose of vulgarity. I would, however, be just, and by no means tax individuals with every vice of the class. But I believe I speak the prevalent