Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ...the parliamentary speeches, giving due favouritism to the orators of the Pall Mall Gazette party, and meagre outlines of their opponents' discourses. If the leading public men on the side of the Pall Mall Gazette gave entertainments, you may be sure they were duly chronicled in the fashionable intelligence; if one of their party wrote a book it was pretty sure to get praise from the critic. I am speaking of simple old days, you understand. Of course there is no puffing, or jobbing, or false praise, or unfair censure now. Every critic knows what he is writing about, and writes with no aim but to tell truth. Thus Philip, the dandy of two years back, was content to wear the shabbiest old coat; Philip, the Philippus of one-and-twenty, who rode showy horses, and rejoiced to display his horse and person in the park, now humbly took his place in an omnibus, and only on occasions indulged in a cab. From the roof of the larger vehicle he would salute his friends with perfect affability, and stare down on his aunt as she passed in her barouche. He never could be quite made to acknowledge that she purposely would not see him; or he would attribute her blindness to the quarrel which they had had, not to his poverty and present position. As for his cousin Ringwood, " That fellow would commit any baseness," Philip acknowledged; "and it is I who have cut him," our friend averred. A real danger was lest our friend should in his poverty become more haughty and insolent than he had been in his days of better fortune, and that he should make companions of men who were not his equals. Whether was it better for him to be slighted m a fashionable club, or to swagger at the head of the company in a tavern parlour? This was the danger we...
