Whether the rage for gentility is most prevalent amongst the upper, middle, or lower classes it is difficult to say; the priest in the text seems to think that it is exhibited in the most decided manner in the middle class; it is the writer’s opinion, however, that in no class is it more strongly developed than in the lower:  what they call being well-born goes a great way amongst them, but the possession of money much farther, whence Mr. Flamson’s influence over them.  Their rage against, and scorn for, any person who by his courage and talents has advanced himself in life, and still remains poor, are indescribable; “he is no better than ourselves,” they say, “why should he be above us?”—­for they have no conception that anybody has a right to ascendency over themselves except by birth or money.  This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a certain extent, the bane of two services, naval and military.  The writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this feeling at work in the army when a child, and he has good reason for believing that it was as strongly at work in the navy at the same time, and is still as prevalent in both.  Why are not brave men raised from the ranks? is frequently the cry; why are not brave sailors promoted?  The Lord help brave soldiers and sailors who are promoted; they have less to undergo from the high airs of their brother officers, and those are hard enough to endure, than from the insolence of the men.  Soldiers and sailors promoted to command are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence and mutinous spirit of the men,—­“He is no better than ourselves:  shoot him, bayonet him, or fling him overboard!” they say of some obnoxious individual raised above them by his merit.  Soldiers and sailors, in general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly sot, or the son of a man who has “plenty of brass”—­their own term--but will mutiny against the just orders of a skilful and brave officer who “is no better than themselves.”  There was the affair of the “Bounty,” for example:  Bligh was one of the best seamen that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of men; proofs of his seamanship he gave by steering, amidst dreadful weather, a deeply-laden boat for nearly four thousand miles over an almost unknown ocean—­of his bravery, at the fight of Copenhagen, one of the most desperate ever fought, of which after Nelson he was the hero:  he was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew of the “Bounty” mutinied against him, and set him half naked in an open boat, with certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with the ship.  Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was “no better than themselves;” he was certainly neither a lord’s illegitimate, nor possessed of twenty