Again, any profligate may sit in the House. This is an objection which is met by the simple fact that a Peer of well-known bad character would not dare to present himself in the House of Lords. But the Peers represent Norman blood and feudal ideas. Nothing of the kind. Most of the Lords are of quite recent creation, and are sprung from families obscure and even humble. Here is an instance. I was once conversing with a bricklayer, an elderly man, who had formerly been a prize-fighter. He began to talk of a certain noble family. “My father,” he said, “used to go poaching with his grandfather. They were both employed on the same farm. His grandfather went into the town of ---- and set up a shop for game--hares and rabbits and such--which my father poached for him till he got took and went to prison.” The sequel is obvious. The man who started the shop and made the other man do the work and undergo the risk for him, got on; his son started life in a higher plane, showed abilities, grew rich, and was eventually created the first Peer of his family. This is perhaps an extreme case; but the point is that Englishmen are constantly working their way to the front by sheer ability and without any family influence whatever; that when they are well to the front they receive Peerages; that the whole family is thereby raised in the social scale; and that every Peer represents a network of cousins, nephews, and relations, who rejoice in his rank because it lends them too a certain social superiority. [Illustration: PIERREPONT PARK, BROADSTAIRS, KENT One of the early Residences of the Queen] [Illustration: Victoria Kensington Palace 1826 December] [Illustration: PRINCESS VICTORIA, AGE 6] [Illustration: THE MUSIC-ROOM AT PIERREPONT PARK] For these and other reasons, the outcry against the House of Lords has ceased. It will perhaps revive again, but in some milder form; for the old assertion of rank, the former haughtiness of the aristocrat, has been greatly mitigated: in the last century it was complained at Bath that noble Lords would not even enter the society of plain gentlemen; it is now understood that whatever may be a man’s rank, he cannot be any more than a gentleman. Rank gives him precedence: a seat in the House of Lords, but no more; this is all he can claim.