In England this were easy enough. The manufacturing districts were grown ambitious. Cotton lords were desirous of a more recognized nobility, and millowners could be found ready to buy a coronet at the cost of half their fortune. But from England late events had banished him, and with a most damaged reputation. Now, carrying nobility to the Continent was like bringing coals to Newcastle, the whole length and breadth of the land being covered with counts, barons, dukes, and princes; and although English nobility stands on a different footing, there was no distinguishing the “real article” amid this mass of counterfeit. Every Frenchman of small fortune was an emigre count. Every German, of none, was sure to be a baron. All Poles, unwashed, uncombed, and uncared for, were of the very cream of the aristocracy; and as for Italians! it was a nation of princes, with their uncles all cardinals. To be a viscount in such company was, perhaps, like Lord Castlereagh's unstarred coat, plus distingue, but certainly more modest. The milor, if not associated with boundless wealth, six carriages, two couriers, three cooks, and a groom of the chambers, the whole of the “Russie,” or the “Black Eagle,” means nothing abroad. If not bound up with all the extravagance and all the eccentricities of riches, if not dazzling by display or amazing by oddity, it is a contradiction of terms; and to be an English noble without waste, profusion, and absurdity, is to deny your country or be a counterfeit of your class. Lord Norwood knew and felt all these things. They had often occupied his speculations and engaged his thoughts; so that, if his mind reverted to them now, it was to regard them as facts for future theory to build upon as mathematicians make use of the proofs of geometry without going over the steps which lead to conviction. No; all his present reflections took a practical form, and might be summed up in the one resolve, “I must go no further. I have done everything that a man dare do,--perhaps a little more, and yet keep his footing in the world.” That tacit verdict of “not proven,” which had been passed upon so many of his actions, might at any moment be reversed now, and a review of his life's career presented anything but a bright retrospect. Expulsion from a great school at thirteen; three years' private dissipation and secret wickedness in a clergyman's family; a dissolute regiment, from which he was given leave to sell out at Malta; two years with the Legion or Don Carlos, it mattered not which, in Spain; a year or so in London, with a weak attempt at reformation; a staff appointment in India obtained and sold; exposure partly hushed up; debts; Jews; renewals; the Fleet; the Bankruptcy Court; a few disreputable duels; an action for seduction; ending with the last affair at Newmarket, made up the grand outline, the details comprising various little episodes with which we must not trouble ourselves.