In either of which cases, you see, dear Snobling, that though the parson
would not have been authorised, yet he might have been excused for
interfering. He has no more right to stop my marriage than to stop my
dinner, to both of which, as a free-born Briton, I am entitled by law,
if I can pay for them. But, consider pastoral solicitude, a deep sense
of the duties of his office, and pardon this inconvenient, but genuine
zeal.

But if the clergyman did in the Duke's case what he would NOT do in
Smith's; if he has no more acquaintance with the Coeurdelion family than
I have with the Royal and Serene House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha,--THEN, I
confess, my dear Snobling, your question might elicit a disagreeable
reply, and one which I respectfully decline to give. I wonder what Sir
George Tufto would say, if a sentry left his post because a noble lord
(not the least connected with the service) begged the sentinel not to do
his duty!

Alas! that the beadle who canes little boys and drives them out, cannot
drive worldliness out too; what is worldliness but snobbishness? When,
for instance, I read in the newspapers that the Right Reverend the Lord
Charles James administered the rite of confirmation to a PARTY OF THE
JUVENILE NOBILITY at the Chapel Royal,--as if the Chapel Royal were a
sort of ecclesiastical Almack's, and young people were to get ready for
the next world in little exclusive genteel knots of the aristocracy, who
were not to be disturbed in their journey thither by the company of
the vulgar:--when I read such a paragraph as that (and one or two such
generally appear during the present fashionable season), it seems to me
to be the most odious, mean and disgusting part of that odious, mean,
and disgusting publication, the COURT CIRCULAR; and that snobbishness is
therein carried to quite an awful pitch. What, gentlemen, can't we even