ble before a great
man of our own nation. But, as you say, my brave and honest John Bull
of a Snob, a French Marquis of twenty descents is very different from
an English Peer; and a pack of beggarly German and Italian Fuersten
and Principi awaken the scorn of an honest-minded Briton. But our
aristocracy!--that's a very different matter. They are the real leaders
of the world--the real old original and-no-mistake nobility.

Off with your cap, Snob; down on your knees, Snob, and truckle.

CHAPTER XXIV--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Tired of the town, where the sight of the closed shutters of the
nobility, my friends, makes my heart sick in my walks; afraid almost to
sit in those vast Pall Mall solitudes, the Clubs, and of annoying the
Club waiters, who might, I thought, be going to shoot in the country,
but for me, I determined on a brief tour in the provinces, and paying
some visits in the country which were long due.

My first visit was to my friend Major Ponto (H.P. of the Horse Marines),
in Mangelwurzelshire. The Major, in his little phaeton, was in waiting
to take me up at the station. The vehicle was not certainly splendid,
but such a carriage as would accommodate a plain man (as Ponto said he
was) and a numerous family. We drove by beautiful fresh fields and green
hedges, through a cheerful English landscape; the high-road, as smooth
and trim as the way in a nobleman's park, was charmingly chequered with
cool shade and golden sunshine. Rustics in snowy smock-frocks jerked
their hats off smiling as we passed. Children, with cheeks as red as the
apples in the orchards, bobbed curtsies to us at the cottage-doors.
Blue church spires rose here and there in the distance: and as the buxom
gardener's wife opened the white gate at the Major's little ivy-covered
lodge, and we drove through the neat plantations of firs and evergreens,
up to the house, my bosom felt a joy and elation which I thought it was
impossible to experience in the smoky atmosphere of a town. 'Here,' I
mentally exclaimed, 'is all peace, plenty, happiness. Here, I shall be
rid of Snobs. There can be none in this charming Arcadian spot.'

Stripes, the Major's man (formerly corporal in his gallant corps),
received my portmanteau, and an elegant little present, which I had
brought from town as a peace-offering to Mrs. Ponto; viz., a cod and
oysters from Grove's, in a hamper about the size of a coffin.

Ponto's house ('The Evergreens' Mrs. P. has christened