ait, etc., at all the houses
where you visited in the street. Your candlesticks might be handsomer
(and indeed they had a very fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then
Mr. Jones's silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much finer. You had
more carriages at your door on the evening of your delightful soirees
than Mrs. Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to my taste, than
that in which people are described as "seeing a great deal of carriage
company"); but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of her being a
baronet's niece, took precedence of your dear wife at most tables. Hence
the latter charming woman's scorn at the British baronetcy, and her
many jokes at the order. In a word, and in the height of your social
prosperity, there was always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something
bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at which you were
permitted to drink.

There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society
where you are merely the equal of everybody else. Many people give
themselves extreme pains to frequent company where all around them are
their superiors, and where, do what you will, you must be subject to
continual mortification--(as, for instance, when Marchioness X. forgets
you, and you can't help thinking that she cuts you on purpose; when
Duchess Z. passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true pleasure of life
is to live with your inferiors. Be the cock of your village; the queen
of your coterie; and, besides very great persons, the people whom Fate
has specially endowed with this kindly consolation are those who have
seen what are called better days--those who have had losses. I am like
Caesar, and of a noble mind: if I cannot be first in Piccadilly, let
me try Hatton Garden, and see whether I cannot lead the ton there. If I
cannot take the lead at White's or the Travellers', let me be president
of the Jolly Bandboys at the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody
who does not pay me honour. If my darling Bessy cannot go out of
a drawing-room until a baronet's niece (ha! ha! a baronet's niece,
forsooth!) has walked before her, let us frequent company where we shall
be the first; and how can we be the first unless we select our inferiors
for our associates? This kind of pleasure is to be had by almost
everybody, and at scarce any cost. With a shilling's-worth of tea and
muffins you can get as much adulation and respect as many people cannot
purchase with a thousand pounds