te elements--now brushing
my way among frieze-coated farmers, trainers, dealers, sharpers, and
stablemen; now floating on the surface of a politer world, where the
topics of conversation took a different range, and were couched in a
very different vocabulary.

"My knowledge of French, and my acquaintance with Parisian life, at
least as seen in that class in which I used to mix, added to a kind of
natural tact, made me, as far as manners and 'usage' were concerned,
fully the equal of those with whom I associated; and I managed matters
so well, that the circumstance of my being seen in the morning with
cords and tops of jockey cut, showing off a 'screw,' or extolling the
symmetry of a spavined hackney, never interfered with the pretensions I
put forward at night, when, arranged in suit of accurate black, I turned
over the last new opera, or delivered a very scientific criticism on
the new 'ballet' in London, or the latest fashion imported from the
Continent.

"Were I to trace back this part of my career, I might perhaps amuse
you more by the incidents it contained, than by any other portion of
my life; nothing indeed is so suggestive of adventure, as that anomaly
which the French denominate so significantly--'a false position,'
The man who--come, come, don't be afraid, though that sounds very
like Joseph Surface, I'm not going to moralize--the man, I say, who
endeavours to sustain two distinct lines in life, is very likely to fail
in both, and so I felt it, for while my advantages all inclined to one
side, my taste and predilections leaned to the other; I could never
adopt knavery as a profession--as an amateur I gloried in it: roguery,
without risk, was a poor pettifogging policy that I spurned; but a
practical joke that involved life or limb, a hearty laugh, or a heavy
reckoning, was a temptation I never could resist. The more I mixed
in society, the greater my intimacy with persons of education and
refinement, the stronger became my repugnance to my actual condition,
and the line of life I had adopted. While my position in society was
apparently more fixed, I became in reality more nervously anxious for
its stability. The fascinations which in the better walks of life are
thrown around the man of humble condition, but high aspirings, are
strong and sore temptations, while he measures and finds himself not
inferior to others, to whom the race is open, and the course is free,
and yet feels in his own heart, that there