what we are going to say: London is cursed with no
predominating, no overwhelming, no _characteristic_ aristocracy. There
is no _set_ or _clique_ of any sort or description of men that you can
point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be
informed what set do you mean: every _salon_ has its set, and every
pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither
envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own:
the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high
life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper
self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the
World of London.

We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all
magnitudes, and myriads of _nebulae_ of no magnitudes at all: we move
harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied
with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we
bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all
terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks,
are our meteors, our _aurorae_, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our
tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our
clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and
we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday
of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as
it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies
his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial
bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_
such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.

If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order--to
true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal
equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life,
which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather
honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic
hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming
interest.

Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred
great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small
talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are