CHAPTER VI.

La ville est partagée en diverses sociétés, qui sont comme autant de petites républiques, qui ont leurs loix, leurs usages, leur jargon, et leurs mots pour rire.

BRUYERE.

AMONG those whom Mr. Morton saw with most repugnance and self-upbraiding, were his humble relations the Bagshawes. They were his equals in family, though not in connection, and were now his superiors in wealth. They now stood almost in the same relative situation to him, in which he once appeared to his less affluent neighbours, and he viewed in them a practical satire on his former self. He felt a strange contrariety of feeling towards them, and hardly knew how they should be treated. His conscience accused him of having slighted

them in his prosperous days; and pride, under the mask of a love of consistency, suggested

that it would be hardly becoming to show much friendliness and attention now to those whom he had formerly avoided.

But then, they had once done him a kindness, and were still truly anxious to assist him, and they evinced such genuine good heartedness, and total forgetfulness of all previous slights, that Mr. Morton's pride gave way, and he could not refrain from a gracious reception. It was perhaps fortunate that they were vulgar, for the equilibrium was thereby more than restored. Extractions being equal, Mr. Morton would have had nothing but alliance to set in the scale against the influence of their wealth, if he could not have borne down their vulgarity by the eclat of his own refinement. Had they been well-bred people, they might, notwithstanding their plebeian name, have had some chance of mingling slightly in that class of society to which he had been admitted; but,

as it was, their manners rendered it impossible, and his jealousy was thereby appeased. He would on no account have owned, even to himself, that he had thus regarded them in the possible situation of rivals; but, nevertheless, such were his feelings.

Lady Louisa, who troubled her head much less about the Bagshawes, never viewed them in that light. Her consciousness of high and undisputed rank, entirely exempted her from such comparisons. She did not conceive it possible that Mrs. Bagshawe and her daughter should ever quit the character of respectful inferiors, and she was satisfied. She was quite conscious of their vulgarity; but it was not a physical annoyance, and she was not acutely sensible of any others. She had occasionally gone so far as to think it a pity that her husband should have such low relations-but that was more his affair than hers; and it did not appear to her that she had any reason for being violently ashamed of them.

Mr. Bagshawe, since we saw him at Huntley Park, had received a considerable accession of fortune by the death of one of his relations. He had at length resigned the profession of an attorney, which he had been latterly following rather lazily; and, in obedience to the urgent and oft-repeated representations of his wife and daughters, had, early in the spring, quitted the legal quarter of the town, and given up his old neighbours and a good house for a worse and dearer one in Lower Grosvenorstreet. He himself was not ambitious of change, and rather regretted it, when he compared the respective comforts of the two residences but the ladies absolutely refused to stoop to such petty considerations. The situation, they thought, must amply compensate for all inferiority. Within sight of Grosvenorsquare, and in the great thoroughfare from thence to Bond-street, even a hovel must be preferable to the best of houses in those regions which have been proclaimed in parliament as

unknown. To Mrs. Bagshawe it seemed like a change of being, and she felt as if every thing that society could offer was now within her reach. Who shall describe the pleasure with which she viewed her new direction! She was even half sorry that the printer of her visiting card had deprived her of the pleasure of writing it there.

I cannot find that in any other city, ancient or modern, this "pride of place" has acquired such strength as in London. Wonderful is the magic which lies in those words, a "good situation;" laudable the discrimination of some of its inhabitants. It would be almost possible, with their assistance, to make out a scale of the comparative gentility of the streets and squares. The claims of the latter would be easily settled. St. James's and Grosvenorsquares would look down like rival potentates from a proud height of dignity on their humbler brethren of Berkeley, Hanover, and Portman; and these, in return, may discharge their con