One of the most amiable qualities about the aristocracy is their liberality and kindness to their dependents; you seldom or never hear any one who has served them faithfully and long having reason to complain. To do something for these people is part of their system, and not to see them neglected or in want, a point of honour. This kindly feeling they extend, as far as their power or influence extends--to humble friends, electioneering partizans, poor connexions. They are always kind and considerate, provided only these persons possess that unpresuming quietude of manner, which makes up a considerable part of that character they delight in, and which they call _safe_. If you introduce to one of these people of fashion, any man who may have an object in view, the first enquiry is, what are his claims--that is, what equivalent has he given, or can he give, for the favours he expects? for it is with the high, as with the low world, nothing for nothing; and secondly, you must be prepared to answer for his _safety_, so that, whatever may be said or done, nothing may, by any possibility, leak out of the _protegé_. This accounts for so many perfumed, be-wigged, purblind, silky fellows being taken in and "done for" by the great; and although these fellows dress like fools, and look like fools, depend on't, they are not the fools you take them for: they are aware, that nothing so effectually throws off their guard and disarms the great, as a well-carried affectation of gentlemanly effeminacy, and "a still small voice, like a woman's." We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are _au naturel_, as we may say, when they go home, and have laid aside the wigs, silk waistcoats, quizzing-glasses, and the rest of their disguise, as honest, friendly, and unaffected fellows, as are in the world--only they do not desire that any body should say so.
Of a man with a stiff back, black beard, short hair, loud voice, and buff waistcoat, people of fashion, on the contrary, stand in continual awe; his tongue is to them a rattlesnake's tail wagging only as a signal for them to get out of his way; they quiver like an aspen at the sound of his voice, and for their own particular, would rather hear the sharpening of a saw: if such a one courts their acquaintance, they are hopelessly, despairingly polite; if, as is usual, he then waxes insolent, and, as the fast fellows would call it, _slangs_ them, they are delighted with the opportunity of displaying that placid indifference upon which they pride themselves as one of their exclusive accomplishments.