They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell's Life_, Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree, or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "_gagging_," and genteel people "_quizzing_," but with a seriousness and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly ridiculous. It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows, that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against it all their lives; but so it is;--the compensating power that rules material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it. Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule) are plebeian. OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER. In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress of rational liberty, and of----but, in short, you have only to glance over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England. The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of thought or action, especially in state affairs.