[2] Esquires were formerly created by patent.
[3] A little of this feeling is getting up in Paris, under the new order of things, which favour the pretensions of money, but France is in the transition state, and it is too soon to predict the result.
[4] In consequence of the delay in publishing these “gleanings,” the writer is often doubtful whether he ought to indulge such prophecies. These words, however, were actually written in 1828.
[5] This lady is just dead, in her ninety-ninth year.
[6] George III. was born in this house. See Wraxall.
[7] Now Sutherland-house; the Marquis of Stafford having been raised to the rank of Duke of Sutherland.
[8] Mr. Washington Alston was once asked, “what is a scirocco?” The celebrated painter pithily described it, as a “Boston east-wind BOILED.” It is a great advantage to be able to take the spring weather of London raw; and raw enough it is, of a verity.
[9] Sir Nicholas Wraxall, in his Posthumous Memoirs of his Own Times, has probably given the true version of this tale. A person of the name of Philipps was denied a request to have a carriage-road from the park to his door, and to soften the refusal, Mr. Pitt offered him an Irish peerage, which he accepted. One hears of many grounds for an illustration, but this is the queerest on record; that of ennobling a man “because a carriage-sweep may not be made between St. James’s Park and his door!—Comme vous violà bâti!”
[10] Jack was shortly after made Chancellor of the Exchequer.
[11] “Decoration” is the proper word, I believe, for the badges of an order; the French, however, frequently term them crachats, or le crachat du roi, the king’s spittle!