It was the courtly and the noble, who then chiefly took this means of improving their minds and manners; a class, to which a baronet by no means necessarily belonged.

To conclude, Sir Wycherly was now eighty-four; hale, hearty, and a bachelor.

He had been born the oldest of five brothers; the cadets taking refuse, as usual, in the inns of court, the church, the army, and the navy; and precisely in the order named.

The lawyer had actually risen to be a judge, by the style and appellation of Baron Wychecombe; had three illegitimate children by his housekeeper, and died, leaving to the eldest thereof, all his professional earnings, after buying commissions for the two younger in the army.

The divine broke his neck, while yet a curate, in a fox-hunt; dying unmarried, and so far as is generally known, childless.