occupies, and those of my beloved readers who live in middle life, and are unacquainted with the frantic struggles, the wicked feuds, the intrigues, cabals, and disappointments which, as I am given to understand, reign in the fashionable world, may bless their stars that they at least are not fashionable Snobs. The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns, to get the Duchess of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a Talleyrand with admiration. She had a brain fever after being disappointed of an invitation to Lady Aldermanbury's thé dansant, and would have committed suicide but for a ball at Windsor. I have the following story from my noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself,-Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that was, and daughter of the Earl of Turfanthunder:

"When that ojous disguised Irishwoman, Lady Muggins, was struggling to take her place in the world, and was bringing out her hidjous daughter Blanche," said old Lady Clapperclaw "(Marian has a hump-back and doesn't show, but she's the only lady in the family)-when that wretched Polly Muggins was bringing out Blanche, with her radish of a nose, and her carrots of ringlets, and her turnip for a face, she was most anxious—as her father had been a cow-boy on my father's land-to be patronised by us, and asked me point-blank, in the midst of a silence at Count Volauvents, the French Ambassador's dinner, why I had not sent her a card for my ball ?

"Because my rooms are already too full, and your ladyship would be crowded inconveniently,' says I; indeed she takes up as much room as an elephant; besides, I wouldn't have her, and that was flat.

"I thought my answer was a settler to her: but the next day she comes weeping to my arms- Dear Lady Clapperclaw,' says she, 'it's not for me; I ask it for my blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season, and not at your ball! My tender child will pine and die of vexation. I don't want to come. I will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout. Mrs. Bolster is going, I know; she will be Blanche's chaperon.'

"You wouldn't subscribe for the Rathdrum blanket and potato fund; you, who come out of the parish,' says I, and whose grandfather, honest man, kept cows there.'

“Will twenty guineas be enough, dearest Lady Clapperclaw ? '

"Twenty guineas is sufficient,' says I, and she paid them; so I said, 'Blanche may come, but not you, mind;' and she left me with a world of thanks.

"Would you believe it ?-when my ball came the horrid woman made her appearance with her daughter! to come ?' said I, in a mighty passion.

Didn't I tell you not What would the world

have said?' cries my Lady Muggins; my carriage is gone for Sir Alured to the Club; let me stay only ten minutes, dearest Lady Clapperclaw.'

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Well, as you are here, madam, you may stay and get your supper,' I answered and so left her, and never spoke a word more to her all night.

"And now," screamed out old Lady Clapperclaw, clapping her hands, and speaking with more brogue than ever, "what do you think, after all my kindness to her, the wicked, vulgar, odious, impudent upstart of a cowboy's granddaughter, has done ?-she cut me yesterday in Hy' Park, and hasn't sent me a ticket for her ball to-night, though they say Prince George is to be there.'”

Yes, such is the fact. In the race of fashion the resolute and active De Mogyns has passed the poor old Clapperclaw. Her progress in gentility may be traced by the sets of friends whom she has courted, and made, and cut, and left behind her. She has struggled so gallantly for polite reputation that she has won it; pitilessly kicking down the ladder as she advanced degree by degree.

Her Irish relations were first sacrificed; she made her father dine in the steward's room, to his perfect contentment; and would send Sir Alured thither likewise, but that he is a peg on which she hopes to hang her future honours; and is, after all, paymaster of her daughter's fortunes. He is meek and content. He has been so long a gentleman that he is used to it, and acts the part of governor very well. In the day-time he goes from the Union to Arthur's, and from Arthur's to the Union. He is a dead hand at picquet, and loses a very comfortable maintenance to some young fellows, at whist, at the Travellers.

His son has taken his father's seat in Parliament, and has of course joined young England. He is the only man in the country who believes in the De Mogynses, and sighs for the days when a

De Mogyns led the van of battle. He has written a little volume of spoony puny poems. He wears a lock of the hair of Laud, the Confessor and Martyr, and fainted when he kissed the Pope's toe at Rome. He sleeps in white kid gloves, and commits dangerous excesses upon green tea.

CHAPTER VIII.

GREAT CITY SNOBS.

THERE is no disguising the fact that this series of papers is making a prodigious sensation among all classes in this Empire. Notes of admiration (!), of interrogation (?), of remonstrance, approval, or abuse, come pouring into Mr. Punch's box. We have been called to task for betraying the secrets of three different families of De Mogyns; no less than four Lady Susan Scrapers have been discovered; and young gentlemen are quite shy of ordering half-a-pint of port and simpering over the Quarterly Review at the Club, lest they should be mistaken for Sydney Scraper, Esq. "What can be your antipathy to Baker Street?" asks some fair remonstrant, evidently writing from that quarter.— "Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs ?" says one estimable correspondent; are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn ?" "Pitch into the University Snobs!" writes an indignant gentleman (who spells elegant with two l's.)—"Show up the Clerical Snob," suggests another." Being at Meurice's Hotel, Paris, some time since," some wag hints, "I saw Lord B. leaning out of the window with his boots in his hand, and bawling out, Garçon, cirez-moi ces bottes.' Oughtn't he to be brought in among the Snobs ?"

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No; far from it. If his lordship's boots are dirty, it is because he is Lord B., and walks. There is nothing snobbish in having only one pair of boots, or a favourite pair; and certainly nothing snobbish in desiring to have them cleaned. Lord B., in so doing, performed a perfectly natural and gentlemanlike action; for which I am so pleased with him that I should like to have him designed in a favourable and elegant attitude, and put at the head of this Chapter

in the place of honour. No, we are not personal in these candid remarks. As Phidias took the pick of a score of beauties before he completed a Venus: so have we to examine, perhaps, a thousand Snobs, before one is expressed upon paper.

Great City Snobs are the next in the hierarchy, and ought to be considered. But here is a difficulty. The great City Snob is commonly most difficult of access. Unless you are a capitalist, you cannot visit him in the recesses of his bank parlour in Lombard Street. Unless you are a sprig of nobility there is little hope of seeing him at home. In a great City Snob firm there is generally one partner whose name is down for charities, and who frequents Exeter Hall; you may catch a glimpse of another (a scientific City Snob) at my Lord N-'s soirées, or the lectures of the London Institution; of a third, (a City Snob of taste), at picture-auctions, at private views of exhibitions, or at the Opera or the Philharmonic. But intimacy is impossible, in most cases, with this grave, pompous, and awful being.

A mere gentleman may hope to sit at almost anybody's tableto take his place at my lord duke's in the country-to dance a quadrille at Buckingham Palace itself (beloved Lady Wilhelmina Wagglewiggle! do you recollect the sensation we made at the ball of our late adored Sovereign Queen Caroline at Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith ?) but the City Snob's doors are for the most part closed to him; and hence all that one knows of this great class is mostly from hearsay.

In other countries of Europe, the Banking Snob is more expansive and communicative than with us, and receives all the world into his circle. For instance, everybody knows the princely hospitalities of the Scharlaschild family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort, &c. They entertain all the world, even the poor at their fêtes. Prince Polonia, at Rome, and his brother, the Duke of Strachino, are also remarkable for their hospitalities. I like the spirit of the first-named nobleman. Titles not costing much in the Roman territory, he has had the head clerk of the bankinghouse made a Marquis, and his Lordship will screw a bajocco out of you in exchange as dexterously as any commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able to gratify such grandees with a farthing or two, it makes the poorest man feel that he can do good. The

VOL. I.

Polonias have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognizance (a mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred places in the city, with the arms of the Colonnas and Dorias.

Our City Snobs have the same mania of aristocratic marriages. I like to see such. I am of a savage and envious nature,-I like to see these two humbugs which, dividing, as they do, the social empire of this kingdom between them, hate each other naturallymaking truce and uniting-for the sordid interests of either. I like to see an old aristocrat swelling with pride of race, the descendant of illustrious Norman robbers, whose blood has been pure for centuries, and who looks down upon common Englishmen as a free-born American does on a nigger,-I like to see old Stiffneck obliged to bow down his head and swallow his infernal pride, and drink the cup of humiliation poured out by Pump and Aldgate's butler. "Pump and Aldgate," says he, "your grandfather was a bricklayer, and his hod is still kept in the bank. Your pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the Conqueror: I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederic Barbarossa. I quarter the Royal Arms of Brentford in my coat. I despise you, but I want money; and I will sell you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, for a hundred thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages. Let your son marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche Pump and Aldgate."

Old Pump and Aldgate clutches at the bargain. And a comfortable thing it is to think that birth can be bought for money. So you learn to value it. Why should we, who don't possess it, set a higher store on it than those who do? Perhaps the best use of that book, the Peerage, is to look down the list, and see how many have bought and sold birth,-how poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell themselves to rich City Snobs' daughters, how rich City Snobs purchase noble ladies-and so to admire the double baseness of the bargain.

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the money. The sale of the girl's person is blessed by a Bishop at St. George's, Hanover Square, and next year you read, "At Roe