they shall be Captains and Lieutenant-Colonels at nineteen, when hoary-headed old lieutenants are spending thirty years at drill: they shall command ships at one-and-twenty, and veterans who fought before they were born. And as we are eminently a free people, and in order to encourage all men to do their duty, we say to any man of any rank-get enormously rich, make immense fees as a lawyer, or great speeches, or distinguish yourself and win battles—and you, even you, shall come into the privileged class, and your children shall reign naturally over ours.'

How can we help Snobbishness, with such a prodigious national institution erected for its worship? How can we help cringing to Lords? Flesh and blood can't do otherwise. What man can withstand this prodigious temptation? Inspired by what is called a noble emulation, some people grasp at honours and win them; others, too weak or mean, blindly admire and grovel before those who have gained them; others, not being able to acquire them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy. There are only a few bland and not-in-the-least-conceited philosophers, who can behold the state of society, viz., Toadyism, organised:-base Man-and-Mammon worship, instituted by command of law:-Snobbishness, in a word, perpetuated, and mark the phenomenon calmly. And of these calm moralists, is there one, I wonder, whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of Dukes down Pall Mall? No: it is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob.,

On one side it encourages the Commoner to be snobbishly mean: and the noble to be snobbishly arrogant. When a noble Marchioness writes in her travels about the hard necessity under which steam-boat travellers labour of being brought into contact "with all sorts and conditions of people: " implying that a fellowship with God's creatures is disagreeable to her Ladyship, who is their superior:when, I say, the Marchioness of writes in this fashion, we must consider that out of her natural heart it would have been impossible for any woman to have had such a sentiment; but that the habit of truckling and cringing, which all who surround her have adopted towards this beautiful and magnificent lady, this proprietor of so many black and other diamonds,— has really induced her to believe that she is the superior of the

world in general: and that people are not to associate with her except awfully at a distance. I recollect being once at the City of Grand Cairo, through which a European Royal Prince was passing India-wards. One night at the inn there was a great disturbance: a man had drowned himself in the well hard by: all the inhabitants of the hotel came bustling into the Court, and amongst others your humble servant, who asked of a certain young man the reason of the disturbance. How was I to know that this young gent. was a Prince? He had not his crown and sceptre on he was dressed in a white jacket and felt hat: but he looked surprised at anybody speaking to him: answered an unintelligible monosyllable, and-beckoned his Aide-de-Camp to come and speak to me. It is our fault, not that of the great, that they should fancy themselves so far above us. If you will fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, depend upon it; and if you and I, my dear friend, had Kotoo performed before us every day,-found people whenever we appeared grovelling in slavish adoration, we should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally, and accept the greatness with which the world insisted upon endowing us.

Here is an instance, out of Lord L 's travels, of that calm, good-natured, undoubting way in which a great man accepts the homage of his inferiors. After making some profound and ingenious remarks about the town of Brussels, his Lordship says:"Staying some days at the Hôtel de Belle Vue-a greatly overrated establishment, and not nearly so comfortable as the Hôtel de France-I made acquaintance with Dr. L, the physician of the Mission. He was desirous of doing the honour of the place to me, and he ordered for us a diner en gourmand at the chief restaurateur's, maintaining it surpassed the Rocher at Paris. Six or eight partook of the entertainment, and we all agreed it was infinitely inferior to the Paris display, and much more extravagant. So much for the copy."

And so much for the gentleman who gave the dinner. Dr. L-, desirous to do his Lordship "the honour of the place," feasts him with the best victuals money can procure-and my lord finds the entertainment extravagant and inferior. Extravagant! it was not extravagant to him;-Inferior! Mr. L

"THE COURT CIRCULAR:" ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS. 177

did his best to satisfy those noble jaws, and my lord receives the entertainment, and dismisses the giver with a rebuke. It is like a three-tailed Pasha grumbling about an unsatisfactory bucksheesh.

But how should it be otherwise in a country where Lord-olatry is part of our creed, and when our children are brought up to respect the Peerage as the Englishman's second Bible?

CHAPTER IV.

THE COURT CIRCULAR," AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS.

EXAMPLE is the best of precepts; so let us begin with a true and authentic story, showing how young aristocratic Snobs are reared, and how early their Snobbishness may be made to bloom. A beautiful and fashionable lady-(pardon, gracious Madam, that your story should be made public; but it is so moral that it ought to be known to the universal world)-told me that in her early youth she had a little acquaintance, who is now indeed a beautiful and fashionable lady too. In mentioning Miss Snobky, daughter of Sir Snobby Snobky, whose presentation at Court caused such a sensation last Thursday, need I say more?

When Miss Snobky was so very young as to be in the nursery regions, and to walk of early mornings in St. James's Park, protected by a French governess and followed by a huge hirsute flunkey in the canary-coloured livery of the Snobkys, she used occasionally in these promenades to meet with young Lord Claude Lollipop, the Marquis of Sillabub's younger son. In the very height of the season, from some unexplained cause, the Snobkys suddenly determined upon leaving town. Miss Snobky spoke to her female friend and confidante. "What will poor Claude Lollipop say when he hears of my absence ?" asked the tenderhearted child.

66

Oh, perhaps he won't hear of it," answers the confidante. "My dear, he will read it in the papers," replied the dear little fashionable rogue of seven years old. She knew already her importance, and how all the world of England, how all the would

VOL. I.

N

be-genteel people, how all the silver-fork worshippers, how all the tattle-mongers, how all the grocers' ladies, the tailors' ladies, the attorneys' and merchants' ladies, and the people living at Clapham and Brunswick Square, who have no more chance of consorting with a Snobky, than my beloved reader has of dining with the Emperor of China-yet watched the movements of the Snobkys with interest, and were glad to know when they came to London and left it.

Here is the account of Miss Snobky's dress, and that of her mother Lady Snobky, from the papers of last Friday :

66 MISS SNOBKY.

:

"Habit de Cour, composed of a yellow nankeen illusion dress over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy, trimmed en tablier, with bouquets of Brussels sprouts: the body and sleeves handsomely trimmed with calimanco, and festooned with a pink train and white radishes. Head dress, carrots and lappets.

66 LADY SNOBKY.

"Costume de Cour, composed of a train of the most superb Pekin bandannas, elegantly trimmed with spangles, tinfoil, and red-tape. Bodice and under-dress of sky-blue velveteen, trimmed with bouffants and noeuds of bell-pulls. Stomacher, a muffin. Head-dress, a bird's nest, with a bird of paradise, over a rich brass knocker en ferronière. This splendid costume, by Madame Crinoline, of Regent Street, was the object of universal admi

ration."

This is what you read. O Mrs. Ellis! O mothers, daughters, aunts, grandmothers of England, this is the sort of writing which is put in the newspapers for you! How can you help being the mothers, daughters, &c., of Snobs, so long as this balderdash is set before you ?

You stuff the little rosy foot of a Chinese young lady of fashion into a slipper that is about the size of a salt-cruet, and keep the poor little toes there imprisoned and twisted up so long that the dwarfishness becomes irremediable. Later, the foot would not expand to the natural size were you to give her a washing-tub for

"THE COURT CIRCULAR:" ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS. 179 a shoe, and for all her life she has little feet, and is a cripple. my dear Miss Wiggins, thank your stars that those beautiful feet of yours-though I declare when you walk they are so small as to be almost invisible-thank your stars that society never so practised upon them, but look around and see how many friends. of ours in the highest circles have had their brains so prematurely and hopelessly pinched and distorted.

How can you expect that those poor creatures are to move naturally when the world and their parents have mutilated them so cruelly? As long as a Court Circular exists, how the deuce are people whose names are chronicled in it ever to believe themselves the equals of the cringing race which daily reads that abominable trash? I believe that ours is the only country in the world now, where the Court Circular remains in full flourish— where you read, "This day His Royal Highness Prince Pattypan was taken an airing in his go-cart." "The Princess Pimminy was taken a drive, attended by her ladies of honour and accompanied by her doll," &c. We laugh at the solemnity with which Saint Simon announces that Sa Majesté se médicamente aujourd'hui. Under our very noses the same folly is daily going on. That wonderful and mysterious man, the author of the Court Circular, drops in with his budget at the newspaper offices every night. I once asked the editor of a paper to allow me to lie in wait and see him.

I am told that in a kingdom where there is a German KingConsort (Portugal it must be, for the Queen of that country married a German Prince, who is greatly admired and respected by the natives), whenever the consort takes the diversion of shooting among the rabbit-warrens of Cintra, or the pheasantpreserves of Mafra, he has a keeper to load his guns, as a matter of course, and then they are handed to the nobleman, his equerry, and the nobleman hands them to the Prince, who blazes away— gives back the discharged gun to the nobleman, who gives it to the keeper, and so on. But the Prince won't take the gun from

the hands of the loader.

As long as this unnatural and monstrous etiquette continues, Snobs there must be. The three persons engaged in this transaction are, for the time being, Snobs.