s in hundreds of windows at
night, is mentioned by Dr. Sheridan.

It is pleasant to add in this connection that the count and countess
de Jarnac worthily sustain the high character earned a century
since by their remarkable ancestor, who was one of the best and most
benevolent men of his day.]

In some respects railroads have had a very injurious effect on the
sociability of English country life. They have rendered people in
great houses too apt to draw their supplies of society exclusively
from town. English trains run so fast that this can even be done in
places quite remote from London. The journey from London to Rugby,
for instance, eighty miles, is almost invariably accomplished in two
hours. Leaving at five in the afternoon, a man reaches that station at
7.10: his friend's well-appointed dog-cart is there to meet him, and
that exquisitely neat young groom, with his immaculate buckskins and
boots in which you may see yourself, will make the thoroughbred do the
four miles to the hall in time to enable you to dress for dinner
by 7.45. Returning on Tuesday morning--and all the lines are most
accommodating about return tickets--the barrister, guardsman,
government clerk can easily be at his post in town by eleven o'clock.
Thus the actual "country people" get to be held rather cheap, and come
off badly, because Londoners, being more in the way of hearing,
seeing and observing what is going on in society, are naturally more
congenial to fine people in country-houses who live in the metropolis
half the year.

It is evident from the following amusing squib, which appeared in one
of the Annuals for 1832, how far more dependent the country gentleman
was upon his country neighbors in those days, when only idle men could
run down from town:

"Mr. J., having frequently witnessed with regret country gentlemen,
in their country-houses, reduced to the dullness of a domestic circle,
and nearly led to commit suicide in the month of November, or, what is
more melancholy, to invite the ancient and neighboring families of
the Tags, the Rags and the Bobtails, has opened an office in Spring
Gardens for the purpose of furnishing country gentlemen in their
country-houses with company and guests on the most moderate terms. It
will appear from the catalogue that Mr. J. has a choice and elegant
assortment of six hundred and seventeen guests, ready to start at a
moment's warning to any country gentleman at any house. Among them
will be f