text:  When we look at the shelves of a circulating library groaning beneath that generally despicable class of volumes called fashionable novels when we take up only to lay down in disgust "NOTORIETY OR FASHIONABLES UNVEILED " "PAVILION OR A MONTH AT BRIGHTON " "MEMOIRS OF A PEERESS " "MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE " "ALMACK S REVISITED " or some such stuff we cannot but infer that it is not the vices or absurdities of what is ignorantly called fashionable life that creates this never-ceasing demand for trash and nonsense but rather a morbid appetite for vapidity and small-talk a lady's-maid's curiosity of the secrets of her betters a servile love of imitating what is unworthy imitation and of following that which is not worth following simply because it is supposed that these ridiculous caricatures represent the real life of "The twice ten thousand for whom earth was made " When we recollect to our shame that not only these swarms of trashy volumes which penetrate even into the back-slums and may be seen unfolded in the paper-patched windows of eighteen-penny milliners in the lowest quarters of our metropolis find a never-failing succession of ravenous readers but that newspapers--Sunday newspapers forsooth--devoted to smutty epigrams low abuse vile insinuations and openly indecent allusion to the connexions habits of life and even personal appearance of fashionable and _pseudo_-fashionable people receive a disgraceful and dangerous support; we must come to the conclusion that in this as in all other merchandize the demand creates the supply and that it is among the lower orders of the middle classes that these caricaturers by profession of the upper their slanderers and their eulogists find sympathy and encouragement