Let my closing word on Wills bear the authority of a great name. To a retailer of news who informed him that Lord Omnium, recently deceased, had left a large sum of money to charities, Mr. Gladstone replied with characteristic emphasis: "Thank him for nothing! He was obliged to leave it. He couldn't carry it with him." VIII PENSIONS "There is no living in this country under twenty thousand a year--not that that suffices, but it entitles one to ask a pension for two or three lives." This was the verdict of Horace Walpole, who, as Sir George Trevelyan antithetically says, "lived in the country and on the country during more than half a century, doing for the country less than half a day's work in half a year." Talleyrand said that no one could conceive how enjoyable a thing existence was capable of being who had not belonged to the _Ancienne Noblesse_ of France before the Revolution; but really the younger son of an important Minister, General, Courtier, or Prelate under our English Georges had a good deal to be thankful for. It is pleasant to note the innocent candour with which, in Walpole's manly declaration, one enormity is made to justify another. A father who held great office in Church or State or Law gave, as a matter of course, all his most desirable preferments to his sons. These preferments enabled the sons to live in opulence at the public charge, their duties being performed by deputy. The Clerk of the Rolls and the Clerk of the Hanaper had no personal contact with the mysterious articles to which they are attached. The Clerk of the Irons, the Surveyor of the Meltings, and the Accountant of Slops lived far remote from such "low-thoughtéd cares." The writer of this book deduces his insignificant being from a gentleman who divided with a brother the lucrative sinecure of Scavenger of Dublin, though neither ever set foot in that fragrant city. A nephew of Lord-Chancellor Thurlow (who survived till 1874) drew pensions for abolished offices to the amount of £11,000 a year; and a son of Archbishop Moore was Principal Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury from his boyhood till the abolition of his Court in 1858, when he was pensioned off with £10,000 a year.