The materials for this history are abundant; there are memoirs, letters, biographies, autobiographies, recollections, in profusion. The life of the Caste during this period of a hundred and fifty years can be fully written. The historian, if we were able to exercise the art of selection, would present a series of highly dramatic chapters; there would be found in them love, jealousy, and intrigue; there would be ambition and cabal; there would be back-stairs interest; there would be Court gossip, and scandal, and whisperings; there would be gaming, racing, coursing, prize-fighting, drinking; there would be young Mohocks and old profligates; there would be ruined rakes and splendid adventurers--in a word, there would be the whole life of pleasure, and the whole life of ambition. It would be, worthily treated, a noble work. This Caste, which enjoyed all the fruits of the earth, for which the rest of the nation toiled with the pious contentment enjoined by the Church, created for its own separate use a society which was at the same time free and unrestrained, yet courtly and stately. No one not born and bred in the Caste could attain its manners; if an outsider by any accident found himself in this circle, he thought he had got into the wrong paradise, and asked leave to exchange. Again, among the Caste, which, with a few brilliant exceptions, was without learning and without taste, were found all the patrons of art, poetry, and _Belles Lettres_. Still more remarkable, while the Caste had no religion, it owned the patronage of all the best livings in the Church. And, while it enjoyed an immunity never before claimed by any class of men, from morality, principle, and self-restraint, the Caste was the encouraging and fostering patron of every useful and admirable virtue, such as thrift, fidelity, temperance, industry, perseverance, frugality, and contentment. A wonderful history, indeed--and all of it connected with Westminster! Of course, another side presents itself. The Caste was brave--its courage was undoubted; it was never without ability of the very highest kind, though a great deal of its ability was allowed to lie waste for want of stimulus; it was proud; if the occasion had arrived--it was very near arriving--the Caste would have faced the mob as dauntlessly as its cousin in France, whom the mob might kill, but could neither terrify nor degrade. Again, there is the literary side. With the exception of a few names belonging to Fleet Street, and a few belonging to Grub Street, most of our literary history belongs to the quarter lying west of Temple Bar--in other words, to Westminster. One might go from street to street, pointing out the residence of Byron here, and of Moore there, of Swift, of Pope, of Addison. And in this way one could compile a chapter as interesting as a catalogue.