t establishment, but he was never looked
on as more than a lucky adventurer by the aboriginal gentry of the
place; and the blue blood, perhaps nourishing itself on thin beer,
turned up its nose disdainfully at the claret and madeira which had been
personally earned and not lineally inherited. This exclusiveness was
narrow in spirit, and hard in individual working; and yet there was a
wholesome sentiment underlying its pride which made it valuable in
social ethics, if immoral on the score of natural equality and human
charity. It was the rejection of pretentiousness, however gilded and
glittering, in favor of reality, however poor and barren; it was the
condemnation of make-believes--the repudiation of pinchbeck. It is not a
generation since this was the normal attitude of society towards its
_nouveaux riches_ and Brummagem jewelry; but time moves fast in these
later days, and national sentiments change as quickly as national
fashions.

We are in the humor to rehabilitate all things, and pinchbeck has now
its turn with the rest. The lady of slender means who would refuse to
wear imitation lace and false jewelry is as rare as the country society
which would exclude the _nouveau riche_ because of his newness, and not
adopt him because of his riches. The whole anxiety now is, not what a
thing is, but how it looks--not its quality, but its appearance. Every
part of social and domestic life is dedicated to the apotheosis of
pinchbeck. It meets us at the hall door, where miserable make-believes
of stuccoed pillars are supposed to confer a quasi-palatial dignity on a
wretched little villa, run up without regard to one essential of home
comfort or of architectural truth. It goes with us into the cold,
conventional drawing-room, where all is for show, nothing for use, where
no one lives, and which is just the mere pretence of a dwelling-room,
set out to deceive the world into the belief that its cheap finery is
the expression of the every-day life and circumstances of the family. It
sits with us at the table, which a confectioner out of a back street has
furnished, and where everything, down to the very flowers, is hired for
the occasion. It glitters in the brooches and bracelets of the women, in
the studs and signet-rings of the men; it is in the hired broughams,
the hired waiters, the pigmy page-boys, the faded paper flowers, the
cheap champagne, and the affectation of social consideration that meet
us at every turn. The whole