e holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted
for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as
a case of lunacy (or _delirium tremens_) rather than of treason. England
owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her
social composition. I am not the man to laugh at it. But sometimes
it expressed itself in extravagant shapes. The course taken with the
infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was,
that the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged _salle-a-manger_,
sang out, "This way, my good men;" and then enticed them away off to the
kitchen. But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, though very
rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or
more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to move, and so far carried
their point, as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a
corner of the room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found ample enough
to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or _dais_, it then
became possible to assume as a fiction of law--that the three delf fellows,
after all, were not present. They could be ignored by the porcelain men,
under the maxim, that objects not appearing, and not existing, are governed
by the same logical construction.

Such now being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, what was to be
done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who were
addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the
insides themselves as often very suspicious characters, were we voluntarily
to court indignities? If our dress and bearing sheltered us, generally,
from the suspicion of being "raff," (the name at that period for
"snobs,"[4]) we really _were_ such constructively, by the place we assumed.
If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the
skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of theatres was urged against us,
where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery,
having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But
the soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre,
it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate
attractions, unless the pit suits the purpose of the dramatic reporter. But
the reporter or critic is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in
the price. Whereas, on