s employed in caricature--who
hears of the grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal
dining-room, the hundred wax candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the
oceans of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich
poults, one at the head and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims:
'Well, if he a'n't bang up, I don't know who be; why he beats my lord
hollow!' The mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through
the streets in an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst
its attendant out-riders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his side,
stout as the wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and bedizened
out like her whose person shone with the jewels of plundered Persia,
stares with silent wonder, and at last exclaims: 'That's the man for my
vote!' You tell the clown that the man of the mansion has contributed
enormously to corrupt the rural innocence of England; you point to an
incipient branch railroad, from around which the accents of Gomorrah are
sounding, and beg him to listen for a moment and then close his ears.
Hodge scratches his head and says: 'Well, I have nothing to say to that;
all I know is that he is bang up, and I wish I were he'; perhaps he will
add--a Hodge has been known to add--'He has been kind enough to put my
son on that very railroad; 'tis true the company is somewhat queer, and
the work rather killing; but he gets there half-a-crown a day, whereas
from the farmers he would only get eighteenpence.' You remind the
mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and
you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of
life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has
dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become
sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: 'Well the more
fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of
thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free
country has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turn-out he has!'
One was once heard to add, 'I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all
my life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much like
him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then madam, you know, makes
up for all.'

CHAPTER V--SUBJECT OF GENTILITY CONTINUED

In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so
considered by d