--Och, sirs! och, sirs! what wull this world come to!
_Theodore_.--The truth is, sir, that people _comme il faut_ cannot well
submit to the total change of society and manners implied in a removal
from Whitehall or Mayfair to some absurd old antediluvian chateau, sir,
boxed up among beeches and rooks. Sir, only think of the small Squires
with the red faces, sir, and the grand white waistcoats down to their
hips--and the dames, sir, with their wigs, and their simpers, and their
visible pockets--and the damsels, blushing things in white muslin, with
sky-blue sashes and ribbons, and mufflers and things--and the sons, sir,
the promising young gentlemen, sir--and the doctor, and the lawyer--and
the parson. So you disapprove of Brighton, Mr. Tickler?
_Tickler_.--Brighthelmstone, when I knew it, was a pleasant fishing
village--what like it is now, I know not; but what I detest in the great
folks of your time, is, that insane selfishness which makes them prefer
any place, however abominable, where they can herd together in their
little exquisite coteries, to the noblest mansions surrounded with the
noblest domains, where they cannot exist without being more or less
exposed to the company of people not exactly belonging to their own
particular sect. How can society hang together long in a country where
the Corinthian capital takes so much pains to unrift itself from the
pillar? Now-a-day, sir, your great lord, commonly speaking, spends but a
month or six weeks in his ancestral abode; and even when he is there, he
surrounds himself studiously with a cursed town-crew, a pack of St.
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