The Merry Past 



occasionally visited by their owners, accompanied 

 probably by a party of guests, and a numerous tribe 

 of domestics. Such visits were generally the result 

 of a passing caprice; often of necessity, in order to 

 recover fresh vigour for the excesses of Paris — rarely 

 for the true enjoyment of the country. Their 

 appearance was not welcomed by their tenants, from 

 whom certain extra services were then required, 

 whilst provisions of all kinds, grain, fish, flesh, fowl, 

 were all in requisition. The servants brought from 

 Paris were plundering and insolent. From all these 

 causes the gentry, who spent their time at cards or 

 billiards, or promenading in their formal gardens in 

 stiff Parisian dresses, were only known on their estates 

 to be hated and despised. 



The French noblesse was ruined by the Revolution, 

 their estates being now, almost without exception, 

 broken up, or in other hands. 



The same fate now threatens many a fine old 

 property in this country, various forces conspiring 

 to impoverish those who own land upon which 

 Radical rapacity has cast its predatory eye. The 

 present tendency of English democracy, indeed, 

 in this respect would seem to incline to what 

 is little less than confiscation, and the prospects of 

 landowners in general are gloomy in the extreme. 

 The influence and power of the old aristocracy 

 is gone, and the proletariat rules, not only from 

 below, but from above, no inconsiderable portion of 

 the more recently created members of the House of 

 Lords being distinctly plebeian in origin, though 



