 considerable influence
and competency. But he was unluckily endowed with a good name and a large though
encumbered estate, both of which went rather to injure than to advance him. He
had a taste for law, which cost him many thousands yearly; and being a great
deal too clever to be robbed, as he said, by any single agent, allowed his
affairs to be mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all equally mistrusted. He was such
a sharp landlord, that he could hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; and such a
close farmer, as to grudge almost the seed to the ground, whereupon revengeful
Nature grudged him the crops which she granted to more liberal husbandmen. He
speculated in every possible way: he worked mines; bought canal-shares; horsed
coaches; took government contracts, and was the busiest man and magistrate of
his county. As he would not pay honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the
satisfaction of finding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with
them to America. For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled with
water; the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his hands; and for
his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the kingdom knew that he lost more
horses than any man in the country, from underfeeding and buying cheap. In
disposition he was sociable, and far from being proud; nay, he rather preferred
the society of a farmer or a horse-- dealer to that of a gentleman, like my
lord, his son: he was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers'
daughters: he was never known to give away a shilling, or to do a good action,
but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his
glass with a tenant and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh with the
poacher he was transporting with equal good-humour. His politeness for the fair
sex has already been hinted at by Miss Rebecca Sharp - in a word, the whole
baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more cunning, mean,
selfish, foolish, disreputable old man. That blood-red - hand of Sir Pitt
Crawley's would be in anybody's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and
pain that, as admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to
admit the existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is in
Debrett.
    One great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections of
