of mankind, while the receivers of rent were the class that produced the English gentleman, who considered himself as entitled to satisfaction if he received an insult even from emperors and kings. The King, who in 1820 succeeded to the throne of England, set an example when he graciously permitted "Young Dukes" to hear him "declare His royal sense of operas or the fair." It was more than ten years before the Reform Bill of 1832, and whatever shortcoming that Reform Bill might have been guilty of, one thing it accomplished. The middle classes ceased after a time to be the standing jest of such writers as the authors of "Vivian Grey" and "Pelham," and, as the latter observed, that joke would not do any longer.
When Charles Villiers went to Cambridge, the qualifications for killing game, or rather the exemptions from the penalties inflicted by the Statute Law, were—1, The having a freehold estate of £100 per annum; that is one hundred pounds being required to enable a man to kill a partridge, when forty shillings enabled him to vote for a knight of the shire; 2, A leasehold for ninety—nine years of £150 per annum; 3, Being the son and heir apparent of an esquire, or person of
