a mere clown who has not run so far round
the world that he can seldom ever find his way back again to his
estate, but stops short in London, where all the extravagance and
nonsense in creation are concentrated, to help our mad gentry out of
their wits and their money together. The old squire groans here in
earnest; for his daughter, who has married Sir Benjamin Spankitt, and
his son Tom, who has married the Lady Babara Ridemdown, are as mad as
the rest of them.

Of Tom, the young squire, we shall take a more complete view anon. But
there is another of the old squire's troubles yet to be noticed, and
that is in the shape of an upstart. One of the worst features of the
times is the growth and spread of upstarts. Old families going down, as
well as old customs, and new people, who are nobody, taking their
places. Old estates bought up--not by the old gentry, who are scattering
their money in London, and among all the grinning monsieurs, mynheers,
and signores, on the frogified continent, but by the soap-boilers and
sugar-bakers of London. The country gentry, he avers, have been fools
enough to spend their money in London, and now the people they have
spent it among are coming and buying up all the estates about them. Ask
him, as you ride out with him by the side of some great wood or
venerable park, "What old family lives there?" "Old family!" he
exclaims, with an air of angry astonishment; "old family! Where do you
see old families nowadays? That is Sir Peter Post, the great
horse-racer, who was a stable-boy not twenty years ago; and that great
brick house on the hill there is the seat of one of the great Bearrings,
who have made money enough among the bulls and bears to buy up the
estates of half the fools hereabout. But that is nothing; I can assure
you, men are living in halls and abbeys in these parts, who began their
lives in butchers' shops and cobblers' stalls."

It might, however, be tolerated that merchants and lawyers,
stock-jobbers, and even sugar-bakers and soap-boilers, should buy up the
old houses; but the most grievous nuisance, and perpetual thorn in the
old squire's side, is Abel Grundy, the son of an old wheelwright, who,
by dint of his father's saving and his own sharpness, has grown into a
man of substance under the squire's own nose. Abel began by buying odds
and ends of lands and scattered cottages, which did not attract the
squire's notice; till at length, a farm being to be sold, which the
squi