The Merry Past 



who claimed, each for himself in his private circle, 

 the same attentions as he had exacted from the 

 world at large when he had been the real great 

 Lord Mayor. 



In private life the middle classes never aspired to 

 rank or to associate with the aristocracy, except 

 when they were asked, for some political purpose, to 

 a grand banquet at the London Tavern, or some place 

 of the same description. On these occasions they 

 were permitted to pay for their own dinner, and drink 

 the toasts that were proposed by the chair, or the 

 chip of aristocracy that sat in it, with three, or 

 three times three, according as the circumstances 

 of the case required. 



At that time wealth and social position did not 

 necessarily go hand-in-hand as now. Those were the 

 days when, whilst birth had its sphere and bullion 

 its own circle, commerce drew its votaries from its 

 own set, leaving the higher things in life to those 

 recognised as betters. An unbridged gulf stood 

 between the moneyed plebeian and the aristocrat, 

 who by a sort of prescriptive right danced at Almack's, 

 played his rubber at White's, commanded his troop 

 in the Life Guards, and was returned for a close 

 borough, afterwards not infrequently receiving some 

 fat sinecure. The limits of a City man's ambition 

 were clearly defined; he might become a director of 

 the East India Company or the Bank of England, 

 a member of the Court of Aldermen, Lord Mayor, 

 the warden of a company, or something similar, but 

 his vulgar figure was not allowed to obtrude itself 



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