' With which my friend Pan,
heaving a great sigh, as if confessing his inability to look Infinity in
the face, sank back resigned, and swallowed a large bumper of claret.
I (who, like other great men, have but one idea), thought to myself,
that as the stars are, so are the Snobs:--the more you gaze upon those
luminaries, the more you behold--now nebulously congregated--now faintly
distinguishable--now brightly defined--until they twinkle off in endless
blazes, and fade into the immeasurable darkness. I am but as a child
playing on the sea-shore. Some telescopic philosopher will arise one
day, some great Snobonomer, to find the laws of the great science which
we are now merely playing with, and to define, and settle, and classify
that which is at present but vague theory, and loose though elegant
assertion.
Yes: a single eye can but trace a very few and simple varieties of
the enormous universe of Snobs. I sometimes think of appealing to
the public, and calling together a congress of SAVANS, such as met at
Southampton--each to bring his contributions and read his paper on the
Great Subject. For what can a single poor few do, even with the subject
at present in hand? English Snobs on the Continent--though they are a
hundred thousand times less numerous than on their native island, yet
even these few are too many. One can only fix a stray one here and
there.
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