ity, and thrashed into
some kind of subordination. Psha! Toad-eaters in pinafores surround
Princekin. Do not respectable people send their children so as to be at
the same school with him; don't they follow him to college, and eat his
toads through life?

And as for women--oh, my dear friends and brethren in this vale of
tears--did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing
as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable, and
pursue him with their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old
old days who brought his three daughters to the King of Mercia, that
His Majesty might choose one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty
province, and its king in fact a Princekin. Ever since those extremely
ancient and venerable times the custom exists not only in Mercia, but
in all the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, and before
Princekins the daughters of our nobles are trotted out.

There was no day of his life which our young acquaintance, the Marquis
of Farintosh, could remember on which he had not been flattered; and
no society which did not pay him court. At a private school he could
recollect the master's wife stroking his pretty curls and treating him
furtively to goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing
as he swaggered over the grass-plat; old men at clubs would make way
for him and fawn on him--not your mere pique-assiettes and penniless
parasites, but most respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families,
gentlemen themselves of good station, who respected this young gentleman
as one of the institutions of their country, and the admired wisdom of
the nation that set him to legislate over us. When Lord Farintosh walked
the streets at night, he felt himself like Haroun Alraschid--(that is,
he would have felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)--a
monarch in disguise affably observing and promenading the city. And let
us be sure there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for
him and run the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with
scores of men in life who neither flattered him nor would suffer his
airs; but he did not like the company of such, or for the sake of truth
undergo the ordeal of being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally
speaking. "I like," says he, "you know, those fellows who are always
saying pleasant things, you know, and who would run from here to
Hammersmith if I asked 'em--much better than thos