lk 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
mornings, and indulged in dice and blind-hookey at nights, and
never missed a race or a boxing-match; and rode flat-races, and kept
bull-terriers. Worse Snobs even than these were poor miserable wretches
who did not like hunting at all, and could not afford it, and were in
mortal fear at a two-foot ditch; but who hunted because Glenlivat and
Cinqbars hunted. The Billiard Snob and the Boating Snob were varieties
of these, and are to be found elsewhere than in universities.

Then there were Philosophical Snobs, who used to ape statesmen at the
spouting-clubs, and who believed as a fact that Government always had
an eye on the University for the selection of orators for the House of
Commons. There were audacious young free-thinkers, who adored nobody or
nothing, except perhaps Robespierre and the Koran, and panted for the
day when the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle away before
the indignation of an enlightened world.

But the worst of all University Snobs are those unfortunates who go
to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their betters. Smith becomes
acquainted with great people at college, and is ashamed of his father
the tradesman. Jones has fine acquaintances, and lives after their
fashion like a gay free-hearted fellow as he is, and ruins his father,
and robs his sister's portion, and cripples his younger brother's outset
in life, for the pleasure of entertaining my lord, and riding by the
side of Sir John. And though it may be very good fun for Robinson to
fuddle himself at home as he does at College, and to be brought home by
the policeman he has just been trying to knock down--think what fun it
is for the poor old soul his mother!--the half-pay captain's widow, who
has been pinching herself all her life long, in order that that jolly
young fellow might have a University education.

CHAPTER XVI--ON LITERARY SNOBS

What will he say about Literary Snobs? has been a question, I make no
doubt, often asked by the public. How can he let off his own profession?