exercise of his vocation as a gentleman jockey and gentleman

leg.

According to Bell's Life, he is an invariable attendant at all races, and an actor in most of them. He rode the winner at Leamington ; he was left for dead in a ditch a fortnight ago at Harrow; and yet there he was, last week, at the Croix de Berny, pale and determined as ever, astonishing the badauds of Paris by the elegance of his seat and the neatness of his rig, as he took a preliminary gallop on that vicious brute "The Disowned," before starting for "the Trench Grand National."

He is a regular attendant at the Corner, where he compiles a limited but comfortable libretto. During the season he rides often in the Park, mounted on a clever, well-bred pony. He is to be seen escorting that celebrated horsewoman, Fanny Highflyer, or in confidential converse with Lord Thimblerig, the eminent handicapper.

He carefully avoids decent society, and would rather dine off a steak at the One Tun with Sam Snaffle the jockey, Captain O'Rourke, and two or three other notorious turf robbers, than with the choicest company in London. He likes to announce at Rummer's that he is going to run down and spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus, the leg, at his little box near Epsom, where, if report speak true, many "rummish plants are concocted.

He does not play billiards often, and never in public: but when he does play, he always contrives to get hold of a good flat, and never leaves him till he has done him uncommonly brown. He has lately been playing a good deal with Famish.

When he makes his appearance in the drawing-room, which occasionally happens at a hunt-meeting or a race-ball, he enjoys himself extremely.

His young friend is Ensign Famish, who is not a little pleased to be seen with such a smart fellow as Rag, who bows to the best turf company in the Park. Rag lets Famish accompany him to Tattersall's and sells him bargains in horse-flesh, and uses Famish's cab. That young gentleman's regiment is in India, and he is at home on sick leave. He recruits his health by being intoxicated every night, and fortifies his lungs, which are weak, by smoking

cigars all day. The policemen about the Haymarket know the little creature, and the early cabmen salute him. The closed doors of fish and lobster shops open after service, and vomit out little Famish, who is either tipsy and quarrelsome-when he wants to fight the cabmen, or drunk and helpless, when some kind friend (in yellow satin) takes care of him. All the neighbourhood, the cabmen, the police, the early potato-men, and the friends in yellow satin, know the young fellow, and he is called Little Bobby by some of the very worst reprobates in Europe.

His mother, Lady Fanny Famish, believes devotedly that Robert is in London solely for the benefit of consulting the physician, is going to have him exchanged into a dragoon regiment, which doesn't go to that odious India; and has an idea that his chest is delicate, and that he takes gruel every evening, when he puts his feet in hot water. Her Ladyship resides at Cheltenham, and is of a serious turn.

Bobby frequents the Union-Jack Club of course; where he breakfasts on pale ale and devilled kidneys at three o'clock; where beardless young heroes of his own sort congregate, and make merry, and give each other dinners; where you may see half-a-dozen of young rakes of the fourth or fifth order lounging and smoking on the steps; where you behold Slapper's long-tailed leggy mare in the custody of a red-jacket until the Captain is primed for the Park with a glass of curaçoa: and where you see Hobby, of the Highland Buffs, driving up with Dobby, of the Madras Fusiliers, in the great banging, swinging cab, which the latter hires from Rumble of Bond Street.

In fact, Military Snobs are of such number and variety, that a hundred weeks of Punch would not suffice to give an audience to them. There is, besides the disreputable old Military Snob who has seen service, the respectable old Military Snob, who has seen none, and gives himself the most prodigious Martinet-airs. There is the Medical-Military Snob, who is generally more outrageously military in his conversation than the greatest sabreur in the army. There is the Heavy-Dragoon Snob, whom young ladies admire, with his great stupid pink face and yellow moustachios-a vacuous, solemn, foolish, but brave and honourable Snob. There is the Amateur-Military Snob, who writes Captain on his card because

he is a Lieutenant in the Bungay Militia. There is the Ladykilling Military Snob; and more, who need not be named.

But let no man, we repeat, charge Mr. Punch with direspect for the Army in general-that gallant and judicious Army, every man of which, from F. M. the Duke of Wellington, &c., downwards (with the exception of H. R. H. Field-Marshal Prince Albert, who, however, can hardly count as a military man,) reads Punch in every quarter of the globe.

Let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the Army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the Battle of Aliwal. A noble deed was never told in nobler language. And you who doubt if chivalry exists, or the age of heroism has passed by-think of Sir Henry Hardinge, with his son, "dear little Arthur," riding in front of the lines at Ferozeshah. I hope no English painter will endeavour to illustrate that scene; for who is there to do justice to it! The history of the world contains no more brilliant and heroic picture. No, no; the men who perform these deeds with such brilliant valour, and describe them with such modest manliness-such are not Snobs. Their country admires them, their Sovereign rewards them, and Punch, the universal railer, takes off his hat and says, Heaven save them!

CHAPTER XI.

ON CLERICAL SNOBS.

AFTER Snobs-Military, Snobs-Clerical suggest themselves quite naturally, and it is clear that, with every respect for the cloth, yet having a regard for truth, humanity, and the British public, such a vast and influential class must not be omitted from our notices of the great Snob world.

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim to snobbishness is undoubted, and yet it cannot be discussed here; for the same reason that Punch would not set up his show in a Cathedral, out of respect for the solemn service celebrated within. There are some places where he acknowledges himself not privileged to make

a noise, and puts away his show, and silences his drum, and takes off his hat, and holds his peace.

And I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do wrong, there are straightway a thousand newspapers to haul up those unfortunates, and cry, Fie upon them, fie upon them! while, though the press is always ready to yell and bellow excommunication against these stray delinquent parsons, it somehow takes very little count of the many good ones—of the tens of thousands of honest men, who lead Christian lives, who give to the poor generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in their favour. My beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could do the same: and let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or have walked to church as children on sunny Sabbath mornings; you who have ever seen the parson's wife tending the poor man's bedside; or the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs of noxious alleys upon his sacred business;-do not raise a shout when one of these falls away, or yell with the mob that howls after him.

Every man can do that. When old Father Noah was overtaken in his cups, there was only one of his sons that dared to make merry at his disaster, and he was not the most virtuous of the family. Let us too turn away silently, nor huzza like a parcel of school-boys, because some big young rebel suddenly starts up and whops the schoolmaster.

I confess, though, if I had by me the names of those seven or eight Irish Bishops, the probates of whose wills were mentioned in last year's journals, and who died leaving behind them some two hundred thousand pounds a-piece-I would like to put them up as patrons of my Clerical Snobs, and operate upon them as successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr. Eisenberg, Chiropodist, has lately done upon "His Grace the Right Reverend Lord Bishop of Tapioca."

And I confess, that when those Right Reverend Prelates come up to the gates of Paradise with their probates of wills in their hands, I confess I think that their chance is *. *But the

gates of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships; so let us trip down again, lest awkward questions be asked there about our own favourite vices too.

And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that clergymen are an over-paid and luxurious body of men. When that eminent ascetic, the late Sydney Smith-(by the way, by what law of nature is it that so many Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith ?)-lauded the system of great prizes in the Church, -without which he said gentlemen would not be induced to follow the clerical profession; he admitted most pathetically that the Clergy in general were by no means to be envied for their worldly prosperity. From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs. Caricaturists delight to represent him so; round, short-necked, pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus. Whereas, if you take the real man, the poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat. He labours commonly for a wage that a tailor's foreman would despise: he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income as most philosophers would rather grumble to meet; many tithes are levied upon his pocket, let it be remembered, by those who grudge him his means of livelihood. He has to dine with the Squire; and his wife must dress neatly; and he must "look like a gentleman," as they call it, and bring up his six great hungry sons as such. Add to this, if he does his duty, he has such temptations to spend his money as no mortal man could withstand. Yes; you who can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars, because they are so good; or an or-molu clock at Howell and James's, because it is such a bargain; or a box at the Opera, because Lablache and Grisi are divine in the Puritani; fancy how difficult it is for a parson to resist spending a halfcrown when John Breakstone's family are without a loaf; or