First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly gentleman;—dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was, in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have just begun to drink ’24 claret now, that of ’15 being scarce, and almost drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven o’clock of a Sunday, and has _John Bull_ and _Bell’s Life_, in bed: frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his county, and pays like the Bank of England. The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord’s father of the present day was sweeping a counting-house.