This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is no need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you call an establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their parents, and the world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and pretend to pity them? Never mind about the lies at the altar, the blasphemy against the godlike name of love, the sordid surrender, the smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a mariage de convenance mean but all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal torches more satisfactory often than the most brilliant love matches that ever flamed and burnt out? Of course. Let us not weep when everybody else is laughing: let us pity the agonised duchess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, runs away with the doctor of course, thats respectable; let us pity Lady Iphigenias father when that venerable chief is obliged to offer up his darling child; but it is over her part of the business that a decorous painter would throw the veil now. Her ladyships sacrifice is performed, and the less said about it the better.
Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence in the newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating title of Marriage in High Life, and which was in truth the occasion of the little family Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all know everybody at least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army list that, at the commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord Viscount Rooster, the Earl of Dorkings eldest son, and the Honourable Charles Belsize, familiarly called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers in one of His Majestys regiments of cuirassier guards. They heard the chimes at midnight like other young men, they enjoyed their fun and frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; sowing their wild oats plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. Lady Kews luck had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his noble young companions. Lord Dorkings house is known to have been long impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Roosters grandfather with the wild Prince and Poins, of his feats in the hunting-field, over the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the penalties of the progenitors imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year. The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. Dorking cannot cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park, the good old Maj