The Mobility are the antipodes to the Nobility: the one race of men being at the top of the world, the other at the bottom of it. The word Mobility is said to be derived from the Latin term _Mobilis_, fickle, or moveable; as Nobility is from _Nobilis_, noble. But what can be more fickle than fashion, what more vulgar than constancy? The heads of society, too, are quite as moveable as its tails. The Nobility are continually in motion; moving in good company, moving in Parliament, moving about the world. If we are to take up the Mobility as vagrants, we must set down the Nobility as tourists; * if the former are _moved_ by Punch and Shakspere, the latter are equally so by Rubini and Bellini. There are some who think that Mobility comes from _Mobble_, to dress inelegantly; a surmise more ingenious than correct. The humbler classes were perhaps originally named, as in former times they were governed, by arbitrary power. As to an opinion that the opposite term, Nobility, is derived from _Nob_, a word which in the vocabulary of certain persons signifies head, we only mention it to show the horrid ideas of etymology which some minds are capable of forming. * There are some real travellers among the Mobility, though most of their _journeymen_ lead a sedentary life. The property most common to all the Mobility is poverty; that is to say, no property at all. It is not usual to describe them as a respectable body, but they are an influential one, and their influence has, of late years, been much augmented. Perhaps, also, as they constitute the operative part of the community, and its physical force, they may be regarded as being, in a national point of view, of some little importance: but all who have any pretensions to delicacy look upon them as disagreable persons. Those of them who are, so to speak, at large, inhabit the huts and hovels of our villages, and the fearful dens in the less known and more unpleasant regions of our towns and cities. Here they are chiefly to be found, according to medical men and other adventurous travellers, in places analogous to those in which our wine is kept, and where our menials repose, the garrets and cellars. Many thousands of them are contained in ships and barracks, and also in penitentiaries, prisons, workhouses, and other places of punishment for indigence and dishonesty.