The Nineteenth Century for this month has an article which I have just read with the greatest delight—it is by Sir Algernon West and is entitled Some Changes in Social Life during the Queen's reign." was present at the Coronation of Her Majesty. At the age of six he ran a race with the great Duke of Wellington from Walmer Church to the castle. The style of the article is most chatty throughout. He tells us how in the early days of Her Majesty's reign peers drove down to the House of Lords in full dress—not our idea of full dress, but a blue coat with tight sleeves and brass buttons and waistcoat of flowered silk and black trousers tightly strapped over patent leather pumps. It was not till 1867 that members came down, to the horror of Mr. Speaker Denison, in pot hats and shooting coats, and now in 1897 Cabinet Ministers ride to their Parliamentary duties on bicyles—in anything but fall dress. With regard to change in manners his description is equally amusing. In the od about arm-in-arm, they even went in to carly part of the reign people usually walk-breakfast in that manner. Sir Algernon never heard his mother address his father by his christian name; he remembers his mother meeting her brother the Duke of Portland at breakfast one morning at Welbeck and the Duke asked her, How is your ladyship this morning?" and she replied with all solemnity, 'I am quite well, I am obliged to your Grace." He comments upon the fact thatin these days all shop attendants are ' young gentlemen" or ' young ladies" and tells a vary good tale, told to him by the Duchess of Somerset. On making enquiry about something she had purchased at Swan and Edgar's she was asked if she had been served by a young gentleman with fair hair, "No," she said meditatively, "I think it was From the "tales of wine parties in by an elderly nobleman with a bald head.' older days it certainly seems that we have at any rate improved in this particular. Sir "Algernon owns as much, and gives the credit for it to the Prince of Wales who introduced the cigarette after dinner and in that way lessened the amount of wine drunk. He notices how scions of noble houses are going into trade and says: 'I have lived to seo the day when a youthful scion of a noble and distinguished house produced from his pocket at dinner a sample bundle of silks to show how cheaply they could be bought at his establishment. Wine circulars with peers' coronets pursue me weekly, and T-can buy my coal at 28a ton from waggons ornamented with a marquis's coronet." The whole article is cram with interesting bits far too numerous to quote and is well worth reading.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.