pleased Providence to place him in, or
to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely
different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously
avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions,
whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is
not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be
analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little
dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes
makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the
real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever
contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the
misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.

Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining
its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not
true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the
mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people
ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.

Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable
society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump
above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound,
unfortunately, in London.

In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon,
this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of
society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally
recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.

There are ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension,
from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the _exclusives_, or
seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a
pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and
earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them
when on his travels.

The _exclusives_ are a queer set, some of them not by any means people
of the best pretensions to lead the _ton_. Lady L---- and Lady B---- may
be very well as patronesses of Almack's; but what do you say to Lady
J----, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by
deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack's, as every body
knows who has been there