The day after the family had departed from town, the letter which Mr Primrose had sent to his daughter was, with several others, put into the magnificent hands of the Right Honorable the Earl of Smatterton. His lordship did everything with a grace peculiar to himself; even the opening of letters was to him a matter of importance; and his friends have often smiled at the serious and self-satisfied air with which he was accustomed to take up the letters one by one, reading aloud the address before he broke the seal. There seemed to be something pleasant to his ear in the sound of the words, “The Right Honorable the Earl of Smatterton.” His lordship used generally to open his letters in the presence of his family; and as it frequently happened that, under cover to his lordship, there came letters addressed to members of his establishment, he used to make a great ceremony in reading aloud their address also. It was curious, we have been told, to hear the different intonation with which his lordship uttered the names of his domestics from that which he used when speaking of his own great self. On the present occasion there was only Lord Spoonbill present when the letters were opened. And when his lordship had first pompously read aloud “The Right Honorable the Earl of Smatterton,” he afterwards, in a lower and quicker tone, read--“Miss Primrose.” His lordship then handed the letter to his son, saying, “Charles, this letter, I perceive, is addressed to Miss Primrose; cause it immediately to be delivered to the young woman. At the same time let me give you a caution. Condescension to our inferiors is very becoming, and is one of the brightest jewels in a nobleman’s coronet: but, Charles, while we condescend to our inferiors, we should always recollect, and let them also know, that they are our inferiors. We should always treat our inferiors with kindness, and we may behave to them, when we admit them to our table, with courteous politeness. But we must not, and ought not, by way of shewing our condescension, to let down and forget our dignity.” Lord Spoonbill thought more of Miss Primrose’s pretty face than he did of his own dignity, and was therefore beginning to grow weary of this right honorable prosing, and to shew symptoms of fidgettiness. But when the Earl of Smatterton had once taken it into his head to administer the word of exhortation to any of his family, he was not easily diverted from his purpose by any expressions or indications of uneasiness on the part of the patient: therefore he proceeded.