“The man’s master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist’s wrath. See, here is a company of them at church, who humbly designate themselves ‘miserable sinners.’ Miserable sinners, indeed! O what floods of turtle-soup, what tons of turbot and lobster-sauce, must have been sacrificed to make those sinners properly miserable! My lady there, with the ermine tippet and draggling feathers, can we not see that she lives in Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director? She has been to the opera over-night (indeed, her husband, on her right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this minute thinking of Mademoiselle Léscadie, whom he saw behind the scenes)--she has been to the opera over-night, which with a trifle of supper afterwards--a white and brown soup, a lobster salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne--sent her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid brings her chocolate to bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and muffins, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, and so can get over the day and the sermon till lunch-time pretty well. What an odour of musk and bergamot exhales from the pew! how it is wadded, and stuffed, and spangled over with brass nails! what hassocks are there for those who are not too fat to kneel! what a flustering and flapping of gilt prayer-books! and what a pious whirring of Bible-leaves one hears all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the text! To be miserable at this rate, you must, at the very least, have four thousand a year; and many persons are there so enamoured of grief and sin, that they would willingly take the risk of the misery to have a life-interest in the Consols that accompany it, quite careless about consequences, and sceptical as to the notion that a day is at hand when you must fulfil _your share of the bargain_.