Sir Stafford, who only learned about the half of his son's liabilities, was thunderstruck at the amount. It was scarcely a year and a half ago that he had paid all George's debts, and they were then no trifle; and now he saw all the old items revived and magnified, as if there was only one beaten road to ruin, and that began at Crocky's, and ended at “the Bench.” The very names of the dramatis personae were the same. It was Lazarus Levi lent the money, at sixty per cent; it was another patriarch, called Gideon Masham, discounted the same. A lucky viscount had once more “done the trick” at hazard; and if Cribbiter had not broken down in training, why Madame Pompadour had, and so the same result came about. George Onslow had got what Newmarket men call a “squeeze,” and was in for about seven thousand pounds. Nothing is more remarkable in our English code social, than the ingenuity with which we have contrived to divide ranks and classes of men, making distinctions so subtle that only long habit and training are able to appreciate. Not alone are the gradations of our nobility accurately defined, but the same distinctions prevail among the “untitled” classes, and even descend to the professional and trading ranks; so that the dealer in one commodity shall take the pas of another; and he who purveys the glass of port for your dessert, would be outraged if classed with him who contributed the Stilton! These hair-splittings are very unintelligible to foreigners; but, as we hold to them, the presumption is, that they suit us; and I should not have stopped now to bestow a passing notice on the system, if it were not that we see it, in some cases, pushed to a degree of extreme resembling absurdity, making even of the same career in life a sliding-scale of respectability; as, for instance, when a young gentleman of good expectations and fair fortune has outraged his guardians and his friends by extravagance, he is immediately removed from the Guards, and drafted into the Infantry of the Line; if he misbehaves there, they usually send him to India; is he incorrigible, he is compelled to remain in some regiment there; or, in cases of inveterate bad habits, he exchanges into the Cape Rifles, and gets his next removal from the knife of a Caffre.