who had been whipped three months previous, and were not allowed more
than three glasses of port at home, to sit down to pineapples and ices
at each other's rooms, and fuddle themselves with champagne and claret.

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder.
Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad
wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk
punch--smoking--ghastly headache--frightful spectacle of dessert-table
next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman,
dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in
Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse
hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving RECHERCHE
little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were
Snobs.

There were what used to be called 'dressy' Snobs:--Jimmy, who might
be seen at five o'clock elaborately rigged out, with a camellia in his
button-hole, glazed boots, and fresh kid-gloves twice a day;--Jessamy,
who was conspicuous for his 'jewellery,'--a young donkey, glittering
all over with chains, rings, and shirt-studs;--Jacky, who rode every day
solemnly on the Blenheim Road, in pumps and white silk stockings, with
his hair curled,--all three of whom flattered themselves they gave laws
to the University about dress--all three most odious varieties of Snobs.

Sporting Snobs of course there were, and are always--those happy beings
in whom Nature has implanted a love of slang: who loitered about the
horsekeeper's stables, and drove the London coaches--a stage in and
out--and might be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early