to be introduced to the miscreant who had caused the blood of noble Hungarian females to be whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime than devotion to their country, and its tall and heroic sons.  The middle classes—­of course there are some exceptions—­admire the aristocracy, and consider them pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the Emperor of Russia, till he became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age, ugliness, and misfortune!  The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor:  look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson.  This person makes his grand debut in the year ’thirty-nine, at a public meeting in the principal room of a country inn.  He has come into the neighbourhood with the character of a man worth a million pounds, who is to make everybody’s fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own, though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain individuals who are his confederates.  But in the year ’forty-nine, he is really in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended to be worth ten years before—­he is worth a million pounds.  By what means has he come by them?  By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to be paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their organization, have introduced crimes and language into England to which it was previously almost a stranger—­by purchasing, with paper, shares by hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs, inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest, utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost instantly subjected.  But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no doubt of the fact—­he has not made people’s fortunes, at least those whose fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away; but his own he has made, emphatically made it; he is worth a million pounds.  Hurrah for the millionnaire!  The clown who views the pandemonium of red brick which he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the neighbourhood of the place of his grand debut, in which every species of architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, is employed in caricature—­who hears of the grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal dining-room, the hundred wax-candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the ocean of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the head, and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims, “Well! if he a’n’t bang up, I don’t know who be; why he beats my