Now, if we include that part of the City lying west and north of Charing Cross and Pall Mall, the part which has been built and occupied since the seventeenth century, we are face to face with nothing less than the history of the British aristocracy during the last two centuries. This history has never been written; it is a work which cannot even be touched upon in these pages: to consider any part of it in a single chapter would be absurd. It belongs, like the history of the House of Commons, to the City of Westminster, because most of its events took place, and most of the people concerned lived, within the limits of that City. Also, like the House of Commons, the quarter where the aristocracy have had their town houses for two hundred years belongs to the national history, and must be treated independently of the City. The British aristocracy was never so much a Caste apart as during the hundred and fifty years ending about the middle of this century. Their younger sons had quite abandoned the ancient practice of entering the City and going into trade; every kind of money-making, except the collection of rents from land, had become unworthy of a gentleman. No one could buy [Illustration: GRIFFINS FROM THE ROOF OF HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL.] or sell and continue to call himself a gentleman. There was a noble Caste and a trading Caste, quite separate and apart. The noble Caste possessed everything worth having; the whole of the land was theirs; all the great offices of state, all the lesser offices worth having, were theirs; the commands in the army and navy were theirs--not only the command of armies and fleets, but also of regiments and men-o’-war; the rich preferments of the Church--the deaneries, canonries, and bishoprics--were theirs; the House of Commons belonged to them (even the popular or radical members belonged to the Caste; in the election which was treated in the last chapter, Fox, the Friend of Liberty, the chosen of the Independent Electors, belonged to the Caste as much as his opponents, Lord Hood and Sir Cecil Wray). Everything was theirs, except the right to trade; they must not trade. To be a banker was to be in trade; the richest merchant was a tradesman as much as the grocer who sold sugar and treacle.