ound three Scotch peers, several ditto Irish, fifteen decayed
baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half
pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers,
one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several
unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle. All the above
play at cards, and usually with success if partners. No objection to
cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings. The country gentleman to
allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch
or Irish peer be present."

A country village very often has no inhabitants except the parson
holding the rank of gentry. The majority of ladies in moderate or
narrow circumstances live in county-towns, such as Exeter, Salisbury,
etc., or in watering-places, which abound and are of all degrees of
fashion and expense. County-town and watering-place society is a thing
_per se_, and has very little to do with "county" society, which
means that of the landed gentry living in their country-houses.
Thus, noblemen and gentlemen within a radius of five miles of such
watering-places as Bath, Tonbridge Wells and Weymouth would not have a
dozen visiting acquaintances resident in those towns.

To get into "county" society is by no means easy to persons without
advantages of position or connection, even with ample means, and to
the wealthy manufacturer or merchant is often a business of years. The
upper class of Englishmen, and more especially women, are accustomed
to find throughout their acquaintance an almost identical style and
set of manners. Anything which differs from this they are apt to
regard as "ungentlemanlike or unladylike," and shun accordingly. The
dislike to traders and manufacturers, which is very strong in those
counties, such as Cheshire and Warwickshire, which environ great
commercial centres, arises not from the folly of thinking commerce a
low occupation, but because the county gentry have different tastes,
habits and modes of thought from men who have worked their way up from
the counting-room, and do not, as the phrase goes, "get on" with
them, any more than a Wall street broker ordinarily gets on with a
well-read, accomplished member of the Bar.

A result of this is that a large number of wealthy commercial men, in
despair of ever entering the charmed circle of county society, take up
their abode in or near the fashionable watering-places, where,
after the manner of thos