Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens

I am about a third of the way through this beast of a book. It's hard going at times, but I'm persevering to the end, even if it takes me all year.

For example, this is ONE sentence:

​'If you ask me,' his companion pursued, 'whether I came back here better satisfied with a state of things which broadly divides society into two classes - whereof one, the great mass, asserts a spurious independence, most miserably dependent for its mean existence on the disregard of humanising conventionalities of manner and social custom, so that the coarser a man is, the more distinctly it shall appeal to his taste; while the other, disgusted with the low standard set up and made adaptable to everything, takes refuge among the graces and refinements it can bring to bear on private life, and leaves the public weal to such fortune as may betide the press and uproar of a general scramble - then again I answer, No.'