than the deprivation of life. The violation of female purity was subjected to fines, in proportion to the rank of the Lady, while the beards of the men were under similar protection. The virtue of a Cyrlisca, and the beard of the Ceorl, were estimated at a very low rate, while a man might be ruined for offending the chastity of a Twelfhinda, or applying a pair of scizzars to the chin of a Twelfhind.-Montesquieu, speaking of these fines, expressly observes, "Que la difference des compositions etoit la règle du rang différent que chaque citoyen tenoit dans l'etat;" and Mably, in his observations on the history of France, cites the Salic and Ripuarian laws upon this head, to shew, from the amount of the fines, the pre-eminence of the clergy in those remote times. Such compositions for murder, as Mr. Hallam has justly remarked, were well known to Homer, who, (Iliad Σ. 497), in his description of the shield of Achilles, represents two men wrangling before the judge, for the weregeld, or price of blood.

But, as I said before, these times are past! To the credit of our modern system of Jurisprudence, the life, the virtue, and the beards of our most ordinary plebeians are estimated as high

as those of the greatest of our nobility. As to the law of murder in particular, it is the same whether we slay a Duke or a Chimney-sweeper. A Spanish soldier once, who had run away in the heat of a battle, very gravely assigned the following reason for what he had done, to the officer who reproached him for his cowardice. "I had rather," said he, "to tell you the real truth, that ten Grandees had been killed than I myself." And yet upon the principle of the "Weregeld," the life of a common soldier would not have been valued at so much as the fiftieth part of the life of one Grandee!

But to return to our Saxon ancestors. There seem to have been about four ranks or degrees below that of Earls, which was the chief title of Nobility. Twelf-hinds, Six-hinds, Twihinds or Ceorls; and perhaps Villans made a fourth.

I know not where school-boys learned their four degrees of" Gentleman, Apothecary, Ploughboy, Thief." But I think the two latter at least must have come from the Saxons, or some of our feudal ancestors. The Ploughboy possibly might represent all the mercenarii of the feudal desmesnes, or Rustici, enumerated in little Doomsday book, as the Porcarii, bovarii, (herdsmen,.

bovers french, boors in short,) Vaccarii, Cotarii, Bordarii, and so forth. The latter have been thought to be connected with ploughs, from the following entry; Terra x bon. ibi iii bord' et 1 Caruca. (Heywood on ranks) Caruca, in this instance, I suppose being the same as the French Charrue.

In regard to the rank of Thief, it would seem that there was such a degree, for by the laws of Athelstan, whoever was not subject or amenable to some particular lord or feudal chief, was accounted a thief, and to be dealt with as such; pro Fure eum capiat quisquis in eum inciderit."

Of the rank and dignity of an Apothecary, I have said something elsewhere, but who in these days can attempt to define the rank of a Gentleman? It is singular enough, but scarcely any body seems to like to be a Gentleman. If he is at all above a Ploughboy and a Thief, he must needs be an Esquire. The term Gent. after a name, is pretty generally held to be a sort of degradation, a peculiarity however, which on looking into the Spectator, I find to be not so modern as I at first apprehended.-See the excellent Letter on Family Genealogy, No. 612.

A curious trial took place not very long ago, to determine whether a particular person were a Gentleman or not? it arose out of the following eircumstances. A match had been made to run some horses which were to be ridden by Gentlemen—on the day appointed the race took place, and was won by a horse, ridden by a person of upwards of seventy years of age, an old sportsman, but who, according to the feelings (not to say prejudices) of the other parties, did not come up to their ideas of a Gentleman. The prize therefore was disputed, and the dispute brought into open court; I was not present at the trial, but the report of it soon after passed through my hands, and though I cannot undertake to give it exactly, some circumstances struck me so forcibly, that I believe I may venture to vouch for their truth. Those who had made the match, and some who rode, were young men of very large fortunes, and to mend the matter M.P.'s, which being interpreted means, Members of Parliament. They were of course, all subpœnaed as witnesses on the trial.

Unfortunately the cause did not come on so soon as was expected, and after all, in the evening of the day of trial, at an hour when all the

young M. P. witnesses, having finished their libations at the hotel, came into Court by: no means so sober as the Judge. They came in also just as they had ridden into the town in the morning, booted, spurred, splashed, and dirty. Vexed at having been kept waiting longer than they expected, and impatient to be gone, they behaved very rudely to the Judge, the Jury, and the Counsel for the defendant. The latter, who rose afterwards to one of the highest stations in Westminster Hall, and to the dignity of the Peerage, began with very gravely stating to the Court, that he was afraid he must throw up his brief, for that though he came into Court fully persuaded that his client was a Gentleman, he now despaired, from what he saw, of being able to prove him so, for as the other parties, from the véry nature of the case, must be presumed to be, beyond all dispute, proper Gentlemen, he could only proceed in the way of comparison. He was therefore afraid to call the attention of the Judge and Jury to the manners and appearance of those Gentlemen, because if they exhibited proper sper cimens of the conduct and character of a real Gentleman, his Client was decidedly not one.

That his habits of life, for instance, were of