nteau in the four-wheeled chaise, and (poor P on being touched
with sciatica) drove me over to 'Carabas Arms' at Guttlebury, where we
took leave. There were some bagmen there in the Commercial Room, and one
talked about the house he represented; and another about his dinner, and
a third about the Inns on the road, and so forth--a talk, not very wise,
but honest and to the purpose--about as good as that of the country
gentlemen: and oh, how much pleasanter than listening to Miss Wirt's
show-pieces on the piano, and Mrs. Ponto's genteel cackle about the
fashion and the county families!

CHAPTER XXXII--SNOBBIUM GATHERUM

WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are producing on an
intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before long we shall have
a regular Snob department in the newspapers, just as we have the
Police Courts and the Court News at present. When a flagrant case of
bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so eloquent
as THE TIMES to point it out? When a gross instance of Snobbishness
happens, why should not the indignant journalist call the public
attention to that delinquency too?

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of Mangelwurzel
and his brother be examined in the Snobbish point of view? Let alone
the hectoring, the bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual
recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations, which abound
in the fraternal dispute--put out of the question these points as
concerning the individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal
affairs we have nothing to do--and consider how intimately corrupt, how
habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a word, a whole
county must be which can find no better chiefs or leaders than these two
gentlemen. 'We don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems
to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar; or that he
should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or that he should have the
commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good sense, in
order to represent us in Parliament.

All we require is, that a man should be recommended to us by the Earl
of Mangelwurzelshire. And all that we require of the Earl of
Mangelwurzelshire is that he should have fifty thousand a year and hunt
the country.' O you pride of all Snobland! O you crawling, truckling,
self-confessed lackeys and parasites!

But this is growing too savage: don't let us fo