Among all the weighty cares and anxieties of this life, however, I must do the earl the justice to say, that he did not neglect the concerns of hereafter--the solemn realities of that Future revealed to us in the Scriptures. To his enlightened and comprehensive view of the state of things around him, it was evident that the Author of the world had decreed the existence of regular gradations of society. The following lines, quoted one night in the House by the leader of his party, had infinitely delighted the earl-- "Oh, where DEGREE is shaken, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick! Take but DEGREE away--untune that string, And, hark! what discord follows! each thing meets, In mere oppugnancy!"[14] When the earl discovered that this was the production of Shakespeare he conceived a great respect for that writer, and purchased a copy of his works, and had them splendidly bound. They were fated never to be opened, however, except at that one place where the famous passage in question was to be found. How great was the honor thus conferred upon the plebeian poet, to stand amid a collection of royal and noble authors, to whose productions, and those in elucidation and praise of them, the earl's splendid-looking library had till then been confined!--Since, thought the earl, such is clearly the order of Providence in this world, why should it not be so in the next? He felt certain that then there would be found corresponding differences and degrees, in analogy to the differences and degrees existing upon earth; and with this view had read and endeavored to comprehend the first page or two of a very dry but learned book--Butler's _Analogy_--lent him by a deceased kinsman--a bishop. This consolatory conclusion of the earl's was greatly strengthened by a passage of Scripture, from which he had once heard the aforesaid bishop preach--"_In my Father's house are_ MANY MANSIONS; _if it had not been so, I would have told you_." On grounds such as these, after much conversation with several old brother peers of his own rank, he and they--those wise and good men--came to the conclusion that there was no real ground for apprehending so grievous a misfortune as the huddling together hereafter of the great and small into one miscellaneous and ill-assorted assemblage; but that the rules of precedence, in all their strictness, as being founded in the nature of things, would meet with an exact observance, so that every one should be ultimately and eternally happy--in the company of his equals. The Earl of Dreddlington would have, in fact, as soon supposed, with the deluded Indian, that in his voyage to the next world-- "His faithful dog should bear him company;"