We are not altogether without a hope that, by strong and energetic measures, the Gents may be put down—this would be a real “improved condition of the people” much to be desired. A Court of Propriety might be established at which Gents could be convicted of misdemeanors against what is usually considered _comme-il-faut_. And punishments might be awarded proportionate to the nature of the offence. For a heavy one a Gent might be transported for fourteen days into good society, where he would be especially wretched; for a light one he might enter into heavy recognizances not to smoke cigars on omnibuses or steamers, not to wear any thing but quiet colours, not to say he knew actresses, and not to whistle when he entered a tavern, or, with his fellows, laugh loudly at nothing, when ensconced in his box there, for any time not exceeding the same period. A Court of Requests would be of no use; for it is of little avail requesting the Gents to do any thing. Compulsion alone would reform them. We trust the day will come—albeit we feel it will not be in our time—when the Gent will be an extinct species; his “effigies,” as the old illustrated books have it, being alone preserved in museums. And then this treatise may be regarded as those zoological papers are now which treat of the Dodo: and the hieroglyphics of coaches and horses, pheasants, foxes’ heads, and sporting dogs found on the huge white buttons of his wrapper, will be regarded with as much curiosity, and possibly will give rise to as much discussion and investigation as the ibises and scarabæi in the Egyptian Room of the British Museum. We hope it may be so. VIZETELLY BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS, FLEET STREET ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that: was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).