. But the heavy swell is,
after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his
_monomania_, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly
be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if,
indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation--who is
the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.

The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to
society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold
iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families,
and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the
text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are,
therewith to be content."

The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in
Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent
fortune--how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He
will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a
man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has
formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the
cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the
gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to
say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible--the latter
having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former
displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with
a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated
eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call
upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on
tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain,
china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses;
corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums,
great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.

The room is papered with some _splendacious_ pattern in blue and gold; a
chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented
ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about,
so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the
bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming
colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous fra