The day had scarcely dawned when Thackeray died, when instead of wealth’s striving to win a place in society, society sought to obtain the recognition of the very rich. His satire had not to expend itself on aristocrats who hastened to abase themselves before the millionaire, and snobbery changed from a worship of rank to a worship of wealth. Our author has often been criticised for his abuse of the nobility. It has been said that it was prompted by envy. I venture to doubt this. To be as great a satirist as he, a man must feel deeply and have a _saeva indignatio_ against a great evil. This, like all his predecessors, Thackeray had. He saw the hardness that the spirit of his age engendered. In all Thackeray’s novels and writings we see how ashamed the new aristocracy was of the trades and businesses by which they made their money and how contemptuous the real aristocracy was of ennobled trade. Lord Steyne sneers at the idea of his son’s wife being a banker’s daughter. The Newcomes conveniently forget the weaver from which they sprang. We are sneeringly reminded that Mr. Wenham’s father was a coal merchant; Major Pendennis conveniently forgets that his brother was a mere apothecary. But this was not part of the old tradition of England. A very little time before people of high birth felt no shame in being in trade. The Nelsons are as good a family as any, yet Nelson himself served as a common sailor before the mast, and his near relatives kept shops in small towns. Let me read you a passage from a recently published book on Wordsworth: “Dorothy Wordsworth ... lived first with her maternal grand-parents, and was not happy with them. She loved an open-air life, and was held closely indoors--serving in fact in a mercer’s shop which they kept.... In 1788 a change came, for she went to live with her uncle at Forncett Rectory near Norwich. The Rector was also a Canon of Windsor, and in the Summer of 1792 ... Dorothy was meeting King George III and his family--the princesses at least ... and going to races and balls.”