It was about a decade after the Reform Bill of 1832 that the walls of the Jericho of Good Society began to shake at the trumpet sound of wealth. Before we enter upon the subject let me remind you of two marks of the great novelist’s skill, (1) the names he gives his characters and (2) his careful tracing of their pedigrees. The Earl of Dorking lives at Chanteclere, his eldest son is Viscount Rooster, his daughters are the Ladies Adelaide and Hennie Pulleine. Who cannot with a very little knowledge of London conjure up Gaunt House and Great Gaunt Square? The character of the Marquis of Steyne is shown in his numerous titles. He is Viscount Hellborough and Baron Pitchley and Grillsbury, etc., etc. The Crawley family name their sons after the most popular man of the day. So Sir Walpole Crawley was evidently born about 1730, Sir Pitt between 1757 and 1761, the Reverend Bute about 1761, Sir Pitt, the second, after the time younger Pitt rose to power--that is, later than 1784, and Rawdon when Lord Rawdon was the favourite of the Prince of Wales. The pedigrees, especially of the rising families, are traced very carefully. Do you remember Mr. Foker, the charming young man of fashion in “Pendennis”? His unfailing good humour, his shrewdness, his gaudy garments, his advice to Pendennis, when he was infatuated with Miss Fotheringay, and when he was going the pace at Oxbridge; his love for Miss Amory and his recovery when he found out how heartless she was? Though he plays a minor part, his character is as subtle a delineation as any by this master hand. Now notice how we get this blend of aristocracy and commercialism; for Foker is a true gentleman, honourable, chivalrous, with healthy instincts, yet with a good deal of the man of business in him, for all his idleness and eccentricity a man not easily duped. In the “Virginians” George Warrington, when lately married and very poor, gets to know a Mr. Voelker, a rich, vulgar but kindly brewer, our hero’s grandfather. His father has Anglicised himself and become Mr. Foker whose porter is of world-wide celebrity. He marries an Earl’s daughter and yet insists on the family beverage being served at every meal, and Major Pendennis feels bound to taste it when he dines though the old gentleman found it disagreed with him. In Harry Foker, the young man of pleasure, we have the half-and-half beer and the peerage, and no bad blend either. In Barnes Newcome we have a less attractive type of the same class. The Newcomes are as humble in origin but more pretentious than the Fokers. They do not parade the family business, being bankers; but have discovered a noble ancestry. Their family can be traced back to the “Barber Surgeon of Edward the Confessor.” Thomas Newcome, the second founder, had however to begin as a very intelligent factory hand who left his native Newcome, made a moderate fortune, gallantly returned and married a girl of his own class, and became the father of that prince of gentlemen, Colonel