We regret to notice the death of Sir Harry Verney,
at the age of ninety-two. He was not the greatest of the squires, that position belonging to Sir Thomas Acland, but he was the greatest of the squires near London, and he ruled his sec- tion of Buckinghamshire with great ability and kindliness of heart. As a landlord, a magistrate, a county Member, and a sportsman, he performed all his duties with his whole strength, and won the esteem and affection of all with whom he came in contact in every grade of life. We are by no means so sure that his class is going to disappear, as some of our Radical friends are, for land only pays those who own it in great blocks; but we are sure that the squires of the future will not be like Sir Harry Verney. He reigned in his district without effort, accreting suffrages, as it were, as a boulder accretes moss. They will have to win the suffrages by exer- tion, and in doing it will lose something of their spontaneity and their pleasantness. Whether the people below them will gain much is an unsettled question. They will have more of their own way, no doubt ; but if a neighbourhood could settle its weather the crops might not be richer. The weather would always be fine, and wouldn't the insects multiply ?
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