We are not, indeed, prepared to say that all this was effected in his lordship’s mind without a considerable effort and a powerful conflict. Necessity, it is said, has no law. It would be more correct to say, that necessity is the most arbitrary and powerful lawgiver. Lord Martindale was very much to be pitied, and so was Mr. Philip. But calamities of this kind will sometimes overtake nobility: by a variety of circumstances, which need not be enumerated, there will be often occurring a painful necessity of repairing dilapidated fortunes by intermarriages with plebeians. It does not occur to us at present how this dreadful calamity can be avoided. There are certainly public stations with high salaries and easy duties; these help a little, but comparatively very little; and there are some of those offices which really require men of understanding and application to fill them; and we fear that such is the seditious and discontented spirit of the times, that the people would grumble at any very great multiplication of places of no use but to those who fill them. Yet, upon second thoughts, there are certain laws, such for instance as the game-laws, which are made expressly and obviously for the amusement of the higher classes; might not some legislative arrangement be contrived, which should, on the same exclusive principle, prevent the nobility from intermarrying with plebeians in order to repair the broken fortunes? Seeing that the nobility, and its peculiar privileges, and its high and mighty purity, is one of the great blessings of our constitution, forming a grand reservoir of political wisdom, surely the people would not be very reluctant to contribute liberally towards an arrangement which should be the means of preventing the said nobility from receiving contamination from intermarriages with plebeians. We only suggest that some contrivance might be made; but what contrivance we must leave to the sagacity of wiser heads than our own, and to those who are more interested in it than we are. It is enough for our present purpose that this arrangement is not yet made; and that in consequence of the want of a suitable supply, poor Philip Martindale was placed under the disagreeable necessity of paying great attention to Miss Sampson; and poor Lord Martindale was also under the same necessity of submitting to see and approve it.