ABSTRACT
Writing on Queen Anne’s birthday, an occasion to display jewelry and to wear new clothes, Richard Steele in The Spectator is struck by the gulf between the wealthy few and “the Multitudes that pass by them,” by the grotesque disparity between the resplendent rich man and the starving beggar:
When a Man looks about him, and with Regard to Riches and Poverty beholds some drawn in Pomp and Equipage, and they and their very Servants with an Air of Scorn and Triumph overlooking the Multitude that pass by them: and in the same Street a Creature of the same Make crying out in the Name of all that is good and sacred to behold his Misery, and give him some Supply against Hunger and Nakedness, but who would believe these two Beings were of the same Species?1
