text:  Not only have the manners the selfishness and vulgarity of the middle ranks been painted with admirable fidelity and drawn with inimitable skill but the habits and slang of the very lowest portrayed with prurient minuteness and interest sought to be awakened in the votaries of fashion or the Sybarites of pleasure by the delineation of the language and ideas of the most infamous wretches who ever disgraced society by their vices or endangered it by their crimes