Splendour is a part of their station, as decent comfort (let us trust), of yours and mine.

Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for some, and has bidden others contentedly to wear the willow-pattern.

And being perfectly contented (indeed humbly thankful--for look around, O Jones, and see the myriads who are not so fortunate,) to wear honest linen, while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric and point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable, envious fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,--the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine! The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country.
How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in hand ?--the Dinner-giving Snob.

The imitation of the great is universal in this city, from the palaces of Kensingtonia and Belgravia, even to the remotest corner of Brunswick Square.
Peacocks' feathers are stuck in the tails of most families.

Scarce one of us domestic birds but imitates the lanky, pavonine strut, and shrill, genteel scream.