st Lord Carrington.

What is a Baronet? ask some. Sir Wilfrid Lawson (who ought to know)
replies that he is a man "who has ceased to be a gentleman and has not
become a nobleman." But this is too severe a judgment. It breathes a
spirit of contempt bred of familiarity, which may, without irreverence,
be assumed by a member of an exalted Order, but which a humble outsider
would do well to avoid. As Major Pendennis said of a similar
manifestation, "It sits prettily enough on a young patrician in early
life, though, nothing is so loathsome among persons of our rank." I
turn, therefore, for an answer to Sir Bernard Burke, who says: "The
hereditary Order of Baronets was created by patent in England by King
James I. in 1611. At the institution many of the chief estated gentlemen
of the kingdom were selected for the dignity. The first batch of
Baronets comprised some of the principal landed proprietors among the
best-descended gentlemen of the kingdom, and the list was headed by a
name illustrious more than any other for the intellectual pre-eminence
with which it is associated--the name of Bacon. The Order of Baronets is
scarcely estimated at its proper value."

I cannot help feeling that this account of the baronetage, though
admirable in tone and spirit, and actually pathetic in its closing touch
of regretful melancholy, is a little wanting in what the French would
call "actuality." It leaves out of sight the most endearing, because the
most human, trait of the baronetage--its pecuniary origin. On this point
let us hear the historian Hume--"The title of Baronet was sold and two
hundred patents of that species of knighthood were disposed of for so
many thousand pounds." This was truly epoch-making. It was one of those
"actions of the just" which "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." King
James's baronets were the models and precursors of all who to the end of
time should traffic in the purchase of honours. Their example has
justified posterity, and the precedent which they set is to-day the
principal method by which the war-chests of our political parties are
replenished.

Another authority, handling the same high theme, tells us that the
rebellion in Ulster gave rise to this Order, and "it was required of
each baronet on his creation to pay into the Exchequer as much as would
maintain thirty soldiers three years at eight-pence a day in the
province of Ulster," and, as a historical memorial of their original
service, the