e "done the trick" at hazard; and if Cribbiter had not
broken down in training, why Madame Pompadour had, and so the same
result came about. George Onslow had got what Newmarket men call a
"squeeze," and was in for about seven thousand pounds.

Nothing is more remarkable in our English code social, than the
ingenuity with which we have contrived to divide ranks and classes of
men, making distinctions so subtle that only long habit and training
are able to appreciate. Not alone are the gradations of our nobility
accurately defined, but the same distinctions prevail among the
"untitled" classes, and even descend to the professional and trading
ranks; so that the dealer in one commodity shall take the pas of
another; and he who purveys the glass of port for your dessert, would
be outraged if classed with him who contributed the Stilton! These
hair-splittings are very unintelligible to foreigners; but, as we hold
to them, the presumption is, that they suit us; and I should not have
stopped now to bestow a passing notice on the system, if it were not
that we see it, in some cases, pushed to a degree of extreme resembling
absurdity, making even of the same career in life a sliding-scale
of respectability; as, for instance, when a young gentleman of good
expectations and fair fortune has outraged his guardians and his friends
by extravagance, he is immediately removed from the Guards, and drafted
into the Infantry of the Line; if he misbehaves there, they usually
send him to India; is he incorrigible, he is compelled to remain in some
regiment there; or, in cases of inveterate bad habits, he exchanges into
the Cape Rifles, and gets his next removal from the knife of a Caffre.

Ancient geographers have decided, we are not aware on what grounds, that
there is a place between "H--ll and Connaught." Modern discovery, with
more certitude, has shown one between the Guards and the Line, a species
of military purgatory, where, after a due expiation of offences, the
sinner may return to the paradise of the Household Brigade without ever
transgressing the Inferno of a marching regiment. This half-way stage is
the "Rifles." So long as a young fashionable falls no lower, he is
safe. There is no impugnment of his character, no injury that cannot
be repaired. Now, George Onslow had reached so far; he was compelled to
exchange into the --th, then quartered in Ireland. It is true he did not
join his regiment; his father had interest enough so