detestable word
genteel. What could ever have made the English such admirers of
gentility, it would be difficult to say; for, during three hundred years,
they suffered enough by it. Their genteel Norman landlords were their
scourgers, their torturers, the plunderers of their homes, the
dishonourers of their wives, and the deflowerers of their daughters.
Perhaps, after all, fear is at the root of the English veneration for
gentility. (G.B.)

{330} Sir Samuel Morton Peto (1809-89), M.P. for Norwich, 1847-54.

{331} Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as
genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the
ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words. Gentle and
gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is
glittering or gaudy. A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can
be genteel. (G.B.)

{332} A favourite figure of Carlyle's, but both he and Borrow took the
_mot_ from a report of Thurtell's trial: Q. 'What do you mean by
respectable?' A. 'He kept a gig.'

{337} Perry. (Kn.)

{340} _Gorgiko_, 'gentile,' used here as a nickname.

{348} The writer has been checked in print by the Scotch with being a
Norfolk man. Surely, surely, these latter times have not been exactly
the ones in which it was expedient for Scotchmen to check the children of
any county in England with the place of their birth, more especially
those who have had the honour of being born in Norfolk--times in which
British fleets, commanded by Scotchmen, have returned laden with anything
but laurels from foreign shores. It would have been well for Britain had
she had the old Norfolk man to dispatch to the Baltic or the Black Sea,
lately, instead of Scotch admirals. (G. B.)

{355} The 'whiffler' was the official sword-flourisher of the
Corporation.

{357a} Tom Cribb (1781-1848), champion pugilist.

{357b} Thomas Winter (1795-1851), pugilist.

{360} See Introduction.

{365} _Harman-beck_, 'constable' (old cant); modern slang, _beak_.

{368} As the present work will come out in the midst of a vehement
political contest, people may be led to suppose that the above was
written expressly for the time. The writer, therefore, begs to state
that it was written in the year 1854. He cannot help adding that he is
neither Whig, Tory, nor Radical, and cares not a straw what party governs
England, provided it is governed well. But he has no hopes of good