"Is like the air they breathe—if they have it not they die;"
in whose absence, all their "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," disappear like snow under sunshine; the edifice of pomp, luxury, and magnificence that "rose like an exhalation," so disappears—
"And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leaves not a rack behind."
Take away money, and that which raised its delicate and pampered possessors above the common condition of mankind—that of privation and incessant labor and anxiety—into one entirely artificial, engendering totally new wants and desires, is gone, all gone; and its occupants suddenly fall, as it were, through a highly rarefied atmosphere, breathless and dismayed, into contact with the chilling exigencies of life, of which till then they had only heard and read, sometimes with a kind of morbid sympathy; as we hear and read of a foreign country, not stirring the while from our snug homes, by whose comfortable and luxurious firesides we read of the frightful palsying cold of the polar regions, and for a moment sigh over and shudder at the condition of their miserable inhabitants, as vividly pictured to us by adventurous travellers.
If the reader had reverently cast his eye over the pages of that glittering centre of aristocratic literature, and inexhaustible solace against the ennui of a wet day—I mean Debrett's Peerage, his attention could not have failed to be riveted, among a galaxy of brilliant but minor stars, by the radiance of one transcendent constellation.
Behold; hush; tremble!
"Augustus Mortimer Plantagenet Fitz-Urse, Earl of Dreddlington, Viscount Fitz-Urse, and Baron Drelincourt; Knight of the Golden Fleece; G. C. B., D. C. L., F. C. S., F. P. S., &c., &c., &c.; Lieutenant-General in the army, Colonel of the 37th regiment of light dragoons; Lord Lieutenant of ——shire; elder brother of the Trinity House; formerly Lord Steward of the Household; born the 31st of March, 17—; succeeded his father, Percy Constantine Fitz-Urse, as fifth Earl, and twentieth in the Barony, January 10th, 17—; married, April 1, 17—, the Right Hon. Lady Philippa Emmeline Blanche Macspleuchan, daughter of Archibald, ninth Duke of Tantallan, K. T., and has issue an only child,
"Cecilia Philippa Leopoldina Plantagenet, born June 10, 17—.
"Town residence, Grosvenor Square.
"Seats, Gruneaghoolaghan Castle, Galway; Tre-ardevoraveor Manor, Cornwall; Llmryllwcrwpllglly Abbey, N. Wales; Tully-clachanach Palace, N. Britain; Poppleton Hall, Hertfordshire.
"Earldom, by patent, 1667; —— Barony, by writ of summons, 12th Hen. II."
Now, as to the above tremendous list of seats and residences, be it observed that the existence of two of them, viz. Grosvenor Square and Poppleton Hall, was tolerably well ascertained by the residence of the august proprietor of them, and the expenditure therein of his princely revenue of £5,000 a-year. The existence of the remaining ones, however, the names of which the diligent chronicler has preserved with such scrupulous accuracy, had become somewhat problematical since the era of the civil wars, and the physical derangement of the surface of the earth in those parts, which one may conceive to have taken place[11] consequent upon those events; those imposing feudal residences having been originally erected in positions so carefully selected with a view to their security against aggression, as to have become totally inaccessible—and indeed unknown, to the present inglorious and degenerate race, no longer animated by the spirit of chivalry and adventure.
[I have now recovered my breath, after my bold flight into the resplendent regions of aristocracy; but my eyes are still dazzled.]
The reader may by this time have got an intimation that Tittlebat Titmouse, in a madder freak of Fortune than any which her incomprehensible Ladyship hath hitherto exhibited in the pages of this history, is far on his way towards a dizzy pitch of elevation,—viz. that he has now, owing to the verdict of the Yorkshire jury, taken the place of Mr. Aubrey, and become heir-expectant to the oldest barony in the kingdom—between it and him only one old peer, and his sole child, an unmarried daughter, intervening. Behold the thing demonstrated to your very eye, in the Pedigree on the next page, which is only our former one[12] a little extended.