I stop before
any house at hazard, and say, 'O house, you are inhabited--O knocker,
you are knocked at--O undressed flunkey, sunning your lazy calves as
you lean against the iron railings, you are paid--by Snobs.' It is
a tremendous thought that; and it is almost sufficient to drive a
benevolent mind to madness to think that perhaps there is not one in
ten of those houses where the 'Peerage' does not lie on the drawing-room
table. Considering the harm that foolish lying book does, I would have
all the copies of it burned, as the barber burned all Quixote's books of
humbugging chivalry.
Look at this grand house in the middle of the square. The Earl of
Loughcorrib lives there: he has fifty thousand a year. A DEJEUNER
DANSANT given at his house last week cost, who knows how much? The
mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the ladies cost four hundred
pounds. That man in drab trousers, coming crying down the stops, is a
dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and won't see him: that is his
lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways,
Loughcorrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of
hospitality; a rogue who passes forged notes upon society;--but I am
growing too eloquent.
You see that nice house, No. 23, where a butcher's boy is ringing the
area-bell. He has three muttonchops in his tray.
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