were vulgar people; though, for anything I know to the
contrary, the first Lord of the Bedchamber may be a very vulgar man; for
anything I know to the contrary, he may not be so.--Such are pretty much
my notions of gentility and vulgarity.

There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both which I hate. _Odi
profanum vulgus, et arceo._ The vapid affectation of the one to me is
even more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality of the
other. If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and boisterous to
show their disregard of the company, a set of fashionable coxcombs are,
to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to show their thorough
breeding. The one are governed by their feelings, however coarse and
misguided, which is something; the others consult only appearances,
which are nothing, either as a test of happiness or virtue. Hogarth in
his prints has trimmed the balance of pretension between the downright
blackguard and the _soi-disant_ fine gentleman unanswerably. It does not
appear in his moral demonstrations (whatever it may do in the genteel
letter-writing of Lord Chesterfield or the chivalrous rhapsodies of
Burke) that vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. It
becomes more contemptible, not less disgusting. What is there in common,
for instance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquettes,
and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal characters in Raphael?
But his people of fashion and quality are just upon a par with the low,
the selfish, the _unideal_ characters in the contrasted view of human
life, and are often the very same characters, only changing places. If
the lower ranks are actuated by envy and uncharitableness towards the
upper, the latter have scarcely any feelings but of pride, contempt, and
aversion to the lower. If the poor would pull down the rich to get
at their good things, the rich would tread down the poor as in a
wine-press, and squeeze the last shilling out of their pockets and the
last drop of blood out of their veins. If the headstrong self-will and
unruly turbulence of a common alehouse are shocking, what shall we
say to the studied insincerity, the insipid want of common sense, the
callous insensibility of the drawing-room and boudoir? I would rather
see the feelings of our common nature (for they are the same at bottom)
expressed in the most naked and unqualified way, than see every feeling
of our nature suppressed, stifled, hermetic