will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to
a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of
invitation to her _set_, which he stated was the great object of his
existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in
question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him,
assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his
power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and
ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had
no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more
laudable and satisfactory ambition.

All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger
persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the _outer_
circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured
with the _soubriquet_ (he was a pianoforte maker) of the _Semi-Grand_!

We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the
city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their
house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense.
It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into
good society, not indeed in the _Court Circular_, but in the--_Gazette_.

There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the
last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the
phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and
are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality,
their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing
among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession
renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more
essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a
gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the
opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a
little toadying, "_on the sly_," is necessary--all the rest is easy. The
court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable,
his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now
go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or
aversion of any body.

But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women,
and an inexhaustible variety