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 hand 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 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