should we not all be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage? We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility, with its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as I don't hold to'; and she makes answer to me, 'You better hadn't.'" Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman! There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind--who is, in one word, a Christian! Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an _e_ to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his example; and White spells his with a _y_; and Bob Smith calls his son and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip, "we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable we calls him _Tow-leure."_