very profusion, there
is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we
have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an
hereditary _noblesse_, your banker is then your great man.

We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy
alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the
credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a
new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it
as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no
compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway
and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will
often be offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief
presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and
stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an
amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is
derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to
deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.

Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter
'Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must
stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man
now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all
his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained
to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his
self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.

Curran said that a corporation was, a "thing that had neither a body
to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned." And, verily, I begin to think
that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A
nation is a great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of
rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and
France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up
to the