A Peer cannot lose his title of nobility excepting by death, or when he has been attainted for High Treason. He is allowed to answer to a bill in Chancery upon his word, and is not required to take an oath. The Sovereign may degrade a Peer from his rank for wasting his estate, as in the case of George Neville, Duke of Bedford, who had led a dissolute life and had squandered all his fortune. He was deprived of his title, honors, and possessions, by Edward IV, the latter being forfeited to the Crown. If that precedent was followed in these times, a great number of scampish young nobles would lose their titles and the remnants of princely estates. Lately, I believe, Parliament has ordered it so that a Peer may be proceeded against for debt, as in the case of the bankrupt Duke of Newcastle. Besides all these manifold privileges, which exist for the benefit of the nobility, the Diplomatic Service is chiefly for their support, and here, as in the Foreign Office, fat sinecures are available at all times, for the improvident and spendthrift nobles. Some idea of the rich prizes of the Diplomatic Service may be got from the following list of salaries of the different Ambassadors, Ministers, and Charges d'Affaires, at the principal countries with which Great Britain holds intercourse. The salaries I give are those of the Ministers alone, not including the salaries of attaches, and they are thus enumerated: [Sidenote: SALARIES OF AMBASSADORS.] France, £10,000; Turkey, £8,000; Russia, £7,800; Austria, £8,000; Prussia, £7,000; Spain, £5,000; United States, £5,000; Portugal, £4,000; Brazil, £4,000; Netherlands, £3,600; Belgium, £3,480; Italy, £5,000; Bavaria, £3,600; Denmark, £3,600; Sweden, £3,000; Greece, £3,500; Switzerland, £2,500; Wirtemberg, £2,000; Argentine Republic, £3,000; Central American Republics, £2,000; Chili, £2,000; Peru, £2,000; Columbia, £2,000; Venezuela, £2,000; Ecuador, £1,400; Coburg, £400; Dresden, £500; Darmstadt, £500; Rome, £800; Persia, £5,000; China, £6,000; and Japan, £4,000. [Illustration] CHAPTER XX. THE LONDON POLICE AND DETECTIVES. ABOUT ten o'clock in the evening, the rain, which had been gathering all day, came down in bucketfuls. The gutters ran like little rivers, and on Lothbury and the Poultry, and on all the buildings behind the Bank and over London Bridge there came down a hot steaming fog that almost blinded, as the rain poured against the faces of those who had to encounter the storm. The rain was hot, and the fog had a fetid, sticky odor, that seemed like the breath of a graveyard, or a festering corpse in an old vault on a hot July day.