But presently,--ingens patebat tellus,--the people became darkly aware that there was such a race.

Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive monosyllable, arose to designate that case.

That name has spread over England like railroads subsequently; snobs are known and recognised throughout an empire on which I am given to understand the sun never sets.

_Punch_ appears at the right season to chronicle their history; and the individual comes forth to write that history in _Punch_.
"I have,--and for this gift I congratulate myself with a deep and abiding thankfulness,--an eye for a snob.

If the truthful is the beautiful, it is beautiful to study even the snobbish;--to track snobs through history as certain little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles; to sink shafts in society, and come upon rich veins of snob-ore.
Snobbishness is like Death, in a quotation from Horace, which I hope you never heard, 'beating with equal foot at poor men's doors, and kicking at the gates of emperors.' It is a great mistake to judge of snobs lightly, and think they exist among the lower classes merely.