s there not something very similar performed
by the respectable class I allude to? Are they not invariably devouring
and destroying some vermin a little smaller than themselves, and making
thus a healthier atmosphere for their betters? If good society only knew
the debt it owes to these defenders of its privileges, a "Vagabonds'
Home and Aged Asylum" would speedily figure amongst bur national
charities.

We have been led to these thoughts by observing how distinctly different
was Major Scaresby's tone in talking of the Countess when he addressed
his betters or spoke in his own class. To the former he gave vent to all
his sarcasm and bitterness; they liked it just because they would n't
condescend to it themselves. To his own he put on the bullying air of
one who said, "How should _you_ possibly know what vices such great
people have, any more than you know what they have for dinner? _I_ live
amongst them,--_I_ understand them,--_I_ am aware that what would be
very shocking in _you_ is quite permissible to _them_. _They_ know
how to be wicked; _you_ only know how to be gross." And thus Scaresby
talked, and sneered, and scoffed, making such a hash of good and evil,
such a Maelstrom of right and wrong, that it were a subtle moralist who
could have extracted one solitary scrap of uncontaminated meaning from
all his muddy lucubrations.

He, however, effected this much: he kept the memory of her who had
gone, alive by daily calumnies. He embalmed her in poisons, each morning
appearing with some new trait of her extravagance, till the world, grown
sick of himself and his theme, vowed they would hear no more of either;
and so she was forgotten.

Ay, good reader, utterly forgotten! The gay world, for so it likes to be
called, has no greater element of enjoyment amongst all its high gifts
than its precious power of forgetting. It forgets not only all it
owes to others,--gratitude, honor, and esteem,--but even the closer
obligations it has contracted with itself. The Palazzo della Torre was
for a fortnight the resort of the curious and the idle. At the sale
crowds appeared to secure some object of especial value to each;
and then the gates were locked, the shutters closed, and a large,
ill-written notice on the door announced that any letters for the
proprietor were to be addressed to "Pietro Arretini, Via del Sole."

CHAPTER XXII. AN UPTONIAN DESPATCH

British Legation, Naples. My dear Harcourt,--It would seem that a let