e supreme contempt
his awkward vagaries inspire.

The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly in the spread of their servile
imitation of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly profligacy at
second-hand; and perhaps this is the worst trait in their character, for
it is at once malicious and unwise: malicious, because the contemplation
of humanity, degraded by bad example in high station, should rather be a
source of secret shame than of devilish gratification: unwise, because
their example is a discredit to their order, and a danger. To posses
birth, fashion, station, wealth, power, is title enough to envy, and
handle sufficient for scandal. How much stronger becomes that title--how
much longer that handle--when men, enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
not using, but abusing their good fortune!

We should not have troubled our heads with the fast fellows at all, if
it were not absolutely essential to the full consideration of our
subject, widely to sever the prominent classes of fashionable life, and
to have no excuse for continuing in future to confound them. We have now
done with the fast fellows, and shall like them the more the less we
hear of them.

CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.

The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who
think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to
preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those
which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest.
They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the
masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into
the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair
neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and
urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of
pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might
ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they
came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their
black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of
Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the
platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these
harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there
was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that
there is better.

We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a f