eir
country and its tall and heroic sons. The middle classes--of course
there are some exceptions--admire the aristocracy, and consider them
pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the
Emperor of Russia till he became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their
adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age,
ugliness, and misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower
classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad
contractor--look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. {330} This
person makes his grand debut in the year '39, at a public meeting in the
principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood with
the character of a man worth a million pounds who is to make everybody's
fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own,
though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part
of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain
individuals who are his confederates. But in the year '49 he is really
in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended he was
worth ten years before--he is worth a million pounds. By what means has
he come by them? By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to be
paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out
which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their
organization, have introduced crimes and language into England to which
it was previously almost a stranger--by purchasing, with paper, shares by
hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are of
his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high
premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs,
inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest,
utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost
instantly subjected. But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no
doubt of the fact--he has not made people's fortunes, at least, those
whose fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away, but his
own he has made, emphatically made it--he is worth a million pounds.
Hurrah for the millionaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red
brick which he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the
neighbourhood of the place of his grand debut, in which every species of
architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, i