At dinner young Salter was vastly liberal of his father's wine, and called loud and often for Champaigne, sparkling bumpers of which had shortly the effect of so raising the spirits of his guests, that they began their usual merciless quizzing of the Marquis, as they styled their younger host; for, holding as they did, all the family in sovereign contempt, the presence of father and sisters was no sort of check. Indeed they rather seemed to expect that their easy familiarity would be received as a compliment by the whole domestic circle; nor were they far wrong in their calculations. Mr. Salter, honest man, thought that, as he had been at a great expense about his son's education and travels to foreign parts, it was no wonder that his said son should on his return home create a very great sensation. As for the young ladies, they were particularly well pleased; for John's getting so intimate with men of fashion must, they thought, lead to their receiving more or less attention.

"You import the silk for your own waistcoats, I suppose, Salter?" observed Sir William Orm, "there is nothing like it to be had in this country."

"I heard a lady—a lady of title too—say, no later than last night," chimed in Geoffery, "that she would give anything for a pair of slippers made out of one of the Marquis's waistcoats, they were all so perfectly beautiful."

"She don't mean to go barefooted till she gets them, I hope," replied the polite object of this delicate compliment.

"I suspect," said Sir William, "that it is the Marquis's own beauty which the lady has so associated with the patterns of the silks he wears that she knows not how to separate the ideas."

"Salter is certainly a fortunate fellow," rejoined Geoffery, "the ladies all admire him."

"Confess the truth now, Marquis," cried Sir William; "in round numbers at home and abroad, how many hearts do you think you have broken in your time?"

"I know better than to kiss and tell," answered young Salter conceitedly.

"That chain," said Geoffery, "which you wear in such graceful festoons, Marquis, must be either Venetian or Maltese, the workmanship is so exquisite. By-the-by, there was a lady last night admiring that too, and wishing so much you would make her a present of it."

"What," cried Sir William, "the ladies volunteering to wear his chains? you may well be vain, Marquis."

"They may volunteer to wear this that get it," said young Salter, looking down at the chain.

"You are a great fool, John," observed his father, "hanging money round your neck that way, that's paying no interest."

"Pardon me!" interrupted Sir William, "it is interesting to the ladies."

"He will be able to afford it to be sure," continued old Salter, "for which he may thank an industrious father. Why, gentlemen, when I began the world—confound it!" he cried, shoving back his chair violently, "what are you treading on my gouty foot for?"

Miss Salter, who knew too well what was coming, had tried to avert the impending evil by, not it would seem a gentle hint under the table. It had for many years of Mr. Salter's life been his boast that he had earned every shilling of his own fortune. "Any fool might belong to an old family," he would say, "but a man deserved credit, he thought, who could make a new one;" which as we have already hinted he was determined to do, by heaping all his wealth on the noble Marquis. On Mr. Salter's first coming to Cheltenham, however, his daughters had prevailed on him, much against his will, to be silent on this favourite topic; while they had flourished away from morning till night about family—respectable family—highly respectable family—old family—ancient family; till at length, by dint of retrograde movements, they had arrived, for aught we know, at coming in with the conqueror. But, alas, about this time Lady Flamborough jilted, and Ladies Whaleworthy and Shawbridge cut poor Mr. Salter, and so put him out of humour with all sorts of quality, as he called them, that he derived a species of consolation from suffering the full tide of his old notions to overflow once more both his soul and his conversation. In vain, therefore, was Miss Salter's hint, as well as many subsequent interruptions. "When I began the world," he recommenced, "the young man in the song who had but one sixpence was better off than I was. My father came by his death in a colliery you see in Cumberland, and left my poor mother with six of us upon the parish. I was big enough at the time, I remember, to lead a cart, so was apprenticed to a farmer, who moving some years after to a farm in Ayrshire, took me with him. There I picked up the knowledge of Scotch farming that afterwards made my fortune, and brought me a wife into the bargain, who, were she living, good woman, wouldn't believe her own eyes, that that there fine gentleman, and these here fine ladies were her own born children! Look here to be sure," he continued, pointing to Miss Salter's ornaments, "such chains, and rings, and bracelets, and nonsense; and if you'll believe me, gentlemen, the first pair of shoes ever her mother had on her feet I bought for her at Maybole fair, in Ayrshire. As for ornaments, we were married with a rush ring, and all the household furniture we possessed was a chaff-bed."

"Well, Mr. Salter," said Sir William, "I can only say that times are greatly changed for the better, and you have yourself to thank for it."

"That's what I say, sir," cried Salter, striking his clenched hand on the table till he made the glasses ring. "Let me see the man that has done so much out of so small a beginning. My son will have as fine an estate as any gentleman in the country, and as fine a house upon it as any nobleman. And if the family is new, why so is the property, and likely, therefore, like a new coat, to give some wear, which is more than some of the old ones will do," he added, winking, and looking exceedingly wise as he laughed at his own wit. The mortified young ladies here rose, and tossing their heads and biting their lips, took their departure.

"Nothing would serve my daughters, when first we come to this vanity-fair," continued Mr. Salter, "but they must pass themselves off for ladies of high family, forsooth, and behave with impertinence to their betters, till they got themselves blown and cut too, as all that sail under false colours deserve to be. But let a man, I say, come forward with nothing but the truth in his mouth, and who shall despise him for having made his way in the world by honest industry?"

Mr. Salter's guests assented, in words at least, to his proposition, and thus encouraged, he proceeded, "A man who has had his own and his children's bred to get, may not have had much time, to be sure, ither for book-larning or bow-making, and may not, therefore, be over good company neither for your schollar nor your fine gentleman; but what e that; there are plenty neither wiser nor genteeler than himself, why shouldn't he be happy with them! As for his children, why, if he can afford to make them independent, let him give them, as I have done, plenty of schooling with it, and so make them company for any man."

Geoffery here interrupted the discussion by rising to take his departure, pleading the ball at his aunt's, which he must attend, while Sir William Orm, finding there would be no chance of renewing the whist party, inveigled away the Marquis to the hazard-table. Mr. Salter, thus left to himself, was soon fast asleep in his chair; and his usual nap being prolonged by his unusual potations, it was a couple of hours before he found his way into the drawing-room. The disappointment of his daughters, on his making his appearance alone, may be imagined, when it is duly considered that they had waited tea, though we cannot say patiently, till near one o'clock in the morning for the gentlemen, of whose early retreat they were not aware.

So much for feeding illbred men of fashion, in the hope of securing in return what they have not to give—their politeness. After, therefore, expressing warmly their disapprobation of such rudeness, the Misses Salter had nothing for it but to retire to rest, venting on each other, 'till sleep closed their lips, the aggregate of spleen collected throughout the day from so many fruitful sources. Yet here were people whose more than common prosperity might have brought with it more than common happiness in their own line, had not silly ambition and idle vanity poisoned every fountain of attainable enjoyment, and created an inconvenient thirst for the springs of a land of which they were never likely to become naturalized citizens.

The Misses Salter had always heard their poor father say, that he had spared no expense in their education; they knew that they possessed accomplishments, and prided themselves on remembering what they had been made to read at school. But they knew not, for it came not within their sphere to know, that there is an education of early habits effecting the minutiÆ of outward bearing, and acquired it would seem, by the unconscious mimicry of infancy, the stamp of which no after-school discipline can yet either erase or bestow; and still less were they capable of comprehending, that there is a further education of refining sympathies and ennobling sentiments which, while as children of Adam we all share one first nature, bestows, in combination with that already named of early habits, a sort of second nature, on the privileged few, who from generation to generation have been reared, like exotics, amid the beautiful and beautifying blossoms of delicacy and feeling, sheltered from the rough winds of coarseness, the blighting atmosphere of necessity, and the cold ungenial climate of that almost justifiable selfishness unavoidably learned by those who have not only their own, but their family's imperious wants to supply by their individual anxious exertions.

Thus it is that shades of thinking, of feeling, and of judging, scarcely sufficiently palpable to form subjects of instruction, pass, unintentionally imparted, unconsciously imbibed, from father to son, from mother to daughter, till education in this enlarged sense, in other words refinement, becomes a kind of hereditary distinction, which must be possessed for several succeeding generations before it can well exist in its highest perfection.

That these are very sufficient reasons why the various classes of society, for the comfort of all parties, should keep in their respective spheres, till gradually assimilated by time and circumstances, no one who knows the world can deny; the error lies in making pride instead of expediency the ground of separation,—the sin, in suffering the manifestations of that pride to be offensive.