street,) I walk in Harley Street (where every other house has a
hatchment), Wimpole Street, that is as cheerful as the Catacombs--a
dingy Mausoleum of the genteel:--I rove round Regent's Park, where the
plaster is patching off the house walls; where Methodist preachers are
holding forth to three little children in the green inclosures, and
puffy valetudinarians are cantering in the solitary mud:--I thread the
doubtful ZIG-ZAGS of May Fair, where Mrs. Kitty Lorimer's Brougham may
be seen drawn up next door to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family
coach;--I roam through Belgravia, that pale and polite district, where
all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and the mansions are painted
a faint whity-brown: I lose myself in the new squares and terraces of
the brilliant bran-new Bayswater-and-Tyburn-Junction line; and in one
and all of these districts the same truth comes across me. I stop before
any house at hazard, and say, 'O house, you are inhabited--O knocker,
you are knocked at--O undressed flunkey, sunning your lazy calves as
you lean against the iron railings, you are paid--by Snobs.' It is
a tremendous thought that; and it is almost sufficient to drive a
benevolent mind to madness to think that perhaps there is not one in
ten of those houses where the 'Peerage' does not lie on the drawing-room
table. Considering the harm that foolish lying book does, I would have
all the copies of it burned, as the barber burned all Quixote's books of
humbugging chivalry.

Look at this grand house in the middle of the square. The Earl of
Loughcorrib lives there: he has fifty thousand a year. A DEJEUNER
DANSANT given at his house last week cost, who knows how much? The
mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the ladies cost four hundred
pounds. That man in drab trousers, coming crying down the stops, is a
dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and won't see him: that is his
lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways,