of workmen with tails to
their coats, and another without tails: the one looked down upon the
other. Cobbett, so felicitous in his nicknames, called his political
opponent, Mr. Sadler, "a linendraper." But the linendraper also has
plenty of people beneath him. The linendraper looks down on the
huckster, the huckster on the mechanic, and the mechanic on the day
labourer. The flunkey who exhibits his calves behind a baron, holds his
head considerably higher than the flunkey who serves a brewer.

It matters not at what class you begin, or however low in the social
scale, you will find that every man has somebody beneath him. Among the
middling ranks, this sort of exclusiveness is very marked. Each circle
would think it a degradation to mix on familiar terms with the members
of the circle beneath it. In small towns and villages, you will find
distinct coteries holding aloof from each other, perhaps despising each
other, and very often pelting each other with hard words. The cathedral
towns, generally, have at least six of such distinct classes, ranking
one beneath the other.

And while each has his or her own exclusive circle, which all of
supposed inferior rank are precluded from entering, they are at the same
time struggling to pass over the line of social demarcation which has
been drawn by those above them. They are eager to overleap it, and thus
gain admission into a circle still more exclusive than their own.

There is also a desperate scramble for front places, and many are the
mean shifts employed to gain them. We must possess the homage of
society! And for this purpose we must be rich, or at least _seem_ to be
so. Hence the struggles after style--the efforts made to put on the
appearances of wealth--the dash, the glitter, and the show of middle and
upper class life;--and hence, too, the motley train of palled and
vitiated tastes--of shrunken hearts and stunted intellects--of folly,
frivolity, and madness.

One of the most demoralizing practices of modern refinement is the
"large party" system. People cram their houses with respectable mobs;
thus conforming to a ridiculous custom. Rousseau, with all his
aberrations of mind, said, "I had rather have my house too small for a
day, than too large for a twelvemonth." Fashion exactly reverses the
maxim; and domestic mischief is often begun with a large dwelling and
suitable accommodations. The misfortune consists in this,--that we never
look below our level for an exa