Some cows lay on the grass just before the door of the house, so that we were obliged almost to ride over them--a strange anomaly, which even Repton animadverts upon. It is the custom here to have the park, that is the ornamented pasture land, extend on one side, if not on both, to the very house; but surely it would be in better taste to have the garden and pleasure-ground around the house. It seems to me, that however agreeable the distant view of cattle may be, their immediate vicinity, with all its accompaniments, is not very pleasant. We found a pretty numerous company, consisting of the master and mistress of the house, both of middle age, their eldest married daughter with her husband, two younger daughters, a neighbouring Baronet with his pretty wife, and her very pleasing but very melancholy sister, Miss ----, a much courted lady who frequently moves in higher circles, three gentlemen not remarkable for anything, the son of the house, and lastly, a London beau of the second class,--a study of an aspiring City dandy. The Baronet had served in Germany, and had, as he told us, obtained the cross of Maria Theresa. He did not wear it, because he thought the thing very well for a young man, but not at all suitable to the quiet country gentleman's life he now led. He was a simple, kind-hearted man, who appeared to have been invited to meet us as best acquainted with the Continent. We however preferred taking lessons in English manners of his wife and her sister. According to this system of manners, as it appeared, a visit from two 'Noblemen,' (even foreign ones, though these are full fifty per cent. under natives,) was an honour to a house of the 'volée' of our host's. We were therefore amazingly 'fêtés;' even the dandy was--as far as the rules of his 'métier' permitted--civil and obliging to us. It is an almost universal weakness of the unnoble in England, to parade an acquaintance with the noble: the noble do the same with regard to the 'fashionable' or 'exclusive;' a peculiar caste, an _emperium in imperio_, which exercises a still more despotical power in society, and is not influenced by rank, still less by riches, but finds the possibility of its maintenance only in this national foible. It is therefore a great delight to the English of the middle classes to travel on the Continent, where they easily make acquaintance with people of rank, of whom they can talk as of intimate friends when they come home. A merchant's wife once gave me a specimen of this: "Do you know the Queen of ----?" said she. I replied that "I had had the honour of being presented to her." "She is a great friend of mine," added she,--exactly as if she had been talking of her husband's partner's wife. She immediately exhibited, among the numerous trinkets which hung about her, a portrait of the Queen, which, as she said, Her Majesty had given her.