may be one any day. He is as sure of the
peerage as--I am not! and then, poor Beecher--as you called him awhile
ago--becomes the Lord Viscount Lackington, with twelve or fourteen
thousand a year! I tell you, girl, that of all the trades men follow,
the very best, to enjoy life, is to be an English lord with a good
fortune."

"And is it true, as I have read," asked Lizzy, "that this high station,
so fenced around by privileges, is a prize open to all who have talent
or ability to deserve it,--that men of humble origin, if they be
gifted with high qualities, and devote them ardently to their country's
service, are adopted, from time to time, into that noble brotherhood?"

"All rubbish; don't believe a word of it. It's a flam and a humbug,--a
fiction like the old story about an Englishman's house being his castle,
or that balderdash, 'No man need criminate himself.' They 're always
inventing 'wise saws' like these in England, and they get abroad, and
are believed, at last, just by dint of repeating. Here 's the true state
of the case," said he, coming suddenly to a halt, and speaking with
greater emphasis. "Here I stand, Christopher Davis, with as much wit
under the crown of my hat as any noble lord on the woolsack, and I might
just as well try to turn myself into a horse and be first favorite for
the Oaks, as attempt to become a peer of Great Britain. It ain't to be
done, girl,--it ain't to be done!"

"But, surely, I have heard of men suddenly raised to rank and title for
the services--"

"So you do. They want a clever lawyer, now and then, to help them on
with a peerage case; or, if the country grows forgetful of them, they
attract some notice by asking a lucky general to join them; and even
then they do it the way a set of old ladies would offer a seat in the
coach to a stout-looking fellow on a road beset with robbers,--they hope
he 'll fight for 'em; but, after all, it takes about three generations
before one of these new hands gets regularly recognized by the rest."

"What haughty pride!" exclaimed she; but nothing in her tone implied
reprobation.

"Ain't it haughty pride?" cried he; "but if you only knew how it is
nurtured in them, how they are worshipped! They walk down St. James's
Street, and the policeman elbows me out of the way to make room for
them; they stroll into Tattersall's, and the very horses cock their
tails and step higher as they trot past; they go into church, and the
parson clears his throat