I love the House of Lords and the hereditary principle. Vulgar Radicals declare the Peers a collection of epileptic degenerates, company-promoters, guinea-pigs, touts for wine-merchants, and grinders of the faces of the poor, and point out that many of its members have been in gaol, and others ought to be; and that some (none quite recently) have been hanged, and others have been in inebriate asylums, and will be again; but I should be sorry to see them abolished. They afford so interesting a spectacle, are so superb an anachronism, and provide such engrossing scandals for readers of the newspapers that the public—and the newspaper proprietors—will not easily be persuaded to part with them at the suggestion of the Gideons of the Radical party. We love the romance of the House of Lords; and for this reason we dislike to see its constituent members selling fruit, or, like Lord Londonderry, Lord Dudley, or Lord Durham, selling coals. Lord Tennyson sold milk, and that revolted many: an ennobled poet dealing in dairy produce is an anachronism, and the owner of an historic title entering into business and exercising all the arts of the commercial man while clinging to the privileges of his station is a thing that no one can look upon without sorrow. Elvaston Castle is an odd place. Exploring in these byways, the wayfarer comes suddenly to it, as into a courtyard, where the church, with its tall pinnacled tower, stands to one side and the mansion on the other, with the courtyard itself littered like the approach to a farm. Tall piers stand on either side, crested with snarling demi-lions holding flaming grenades. For centuries the estate has been in the Stanhope family, created Earls of Harrington in 1742, and is placed amid very beautiful gardens, greatly improved about the middle of last century by Charles, fourth Earl, who married Maria Foote, the actress, and wrought many wonderful things here; forming that lake which the great Duke of Wellington declared to be the only natural artificial sheet of water he had ever seen. The place looks strangely romantic and wild.