Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843

A few evenings only had elapsed after this interesting meeting, before I was again spending a delicious hour or two with the simple-hearted and generous upholsterer. There was something very winning in these moments snatched and secured from the hurricane of life, and passed in thorough and undisturbed enjoyment. My friend, notwithstanding that he had engaged my services, and was pleased to express his satisfaction at the mode in which I rendered them, was yet alive to my interests, and too apprehensive of injuring them by keeping me away from loftier employment. He did not like my being thrown out of the chapel, especially after he had heard my determination not to forsake immediately the sect to which I had attached myself. He was indifferent to his own fate. His worldly prospects could not be injured by his expulsion; on the contrary, he slyly assured me that "his neighbours would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had great power in the Church, and if I represented my case to either or both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do any thing mean and dirty in the business, yet, he thought, as the father of a numerous family, he ought to advise me to be civil, and to do the best for myself in this unfortunate dilemmy."

I accepted his advice, and determined to wait upon the dapper deacon. I was physically afraid to encounter Buster, not so much on account of what I had seen of his spiritual pretension, as of what I had heard of his domestic behaviour. It was not a very difficult task to obtain from Mrs Thompson the secret history of many of her highly privileged acquaintances and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful degree, the peculiar virtue of her amiable sex, and to communicate secrets, delivered to her in strictest confidence, and imparted by her again with equal caution and provisory care, was the choicest recreation of her well employed and useful life. It was through this lady that I was favoured with a glance into the natural heart of Mr Buster; or into what he would himself have called, with a most unfilial disgust, "HIS OLD MAN." It appeared that, like most great actors, he was a very different personage before and behind the curtain. Kings, who are miserable and gloomy through the five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who must needs die at the end of it, are your merriest knaves over a tankard at the Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool shall be the dullest dog that ever spoiled mirth with sour and discontented looks. Jabez Buster, his employment being over at Mr Clayton's theatre, his dress thrown aside, his mask put by, was not to be recognised by his nearest friend. This is the perfection of art. A greater tyrant on a small scale, with limited means, never existed than the saintly Buster when his character was done, and he found himself again in the bosom of his family. Unhappy bosom was it, and a sad flustration did his presence, nine times out of ten, produce there. He had four sons, and a delicate creature for a wife, born to be crushed. The sons were remarkable chiefly for their hypocrisy, which promised, in the fulness of time, to throw their highly-gifted parent's far into the shade; and, secondarily, for their persecution of their helpless and indulgent mother. They witnessed and approved so much the success of Jabez in this particular, that during his absence they cultivated the affectionate habit until it became a kind of second nature, infinitely more racy and agreeable than the primary. In proportion to their deliberate oppression of their mother was their natural dread and terror of their father. Mrs Thompson pronounced it "the shockingest thing in this world to be present when the young blue-beards were worryting their mother's soul out with saying, 'I sha'n't' and 'I won't' to every thing, and swearing 'they'd tell their father this,' 'and put him up to that, and then wouldn't he make a jolly row about it,' with hollering out for nothing at all, only to frighten the poor timid cretur, and then making a holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps falling down, roaring and kicking, just to drive the poor thing clean out of her wits, on purpose to laugh at her for being so taken in. Well, but it was a great treat, too," she added, "to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's heavy foot in the passage, and to see what a scrimmage there was at once amongst all the young hypocrites. How they all run in different directions—one to the fire—one to the table—one out at the back-door—one any where he could—all of 'em as silent as mice, and afeard of the very eye of the blacksmith, who knew, good man, how to keep every man Jack of 'em in order, and, if a word didn't do, wasn't by no means behind hand with blows. Buster," she continued, "had his faults like other men, but he was a saint if ever there was one. To be sure he did like to have his own way at home, and wasn't it natural? And if he was rather overbearing and cruel to his wife, wasn't that, she should like to know, Satan warring with the new man, and sometimes getting the better of it? And if he was, as Thompson had hinted, rayther partial to the creature, and liked good living, what was this to the purpose? it was an infirmity that might happen to the best Christian living. Nobody could say that he wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen vessel, and faithful to his call. A man isn't a backslider because he's carnally weak, and a man isn't a saint because he's moral and well-behaved. 'Good works,' Mr Clayton said, 'was filthy rags,' and so they were. To be sure, between themselves, there were one or two things said about Buster that she couldn't approve of. For instance, she had been told—but this was quite in confidence, and really must not go further—that he was—that—that, in fact, he was overtaken now and then with liquor, and then the house could hardly hold him, he got so furious, and, they did say, used such horrid language. But, after all, what was this? If a man's elected, he is not so much the worse. Besides, if one listened to people, one might never leave off. She had actually heard, she wouldn't say from whom, that Buster very often kept out late at night—sometimes didn't come home at all, and sometimes did at two o'clock in the morning, very hungry and ill-tempered, and then forced his poor wife out of bed, and made the delicate and shivering creature light a fire, cook beefsteaks, go into the yard for beer, and wait upon him till he had even eat every morsel up. She for one would never believe all this, though Mrs Buster herself had told her every word with tears in her eyes, and in the greatest confidence; so she trusted I wouldn't repeat it, as it wouldn't look well in her to be found out telling other people's secrets." Singular, perhaps, to say, the tale did not go further. I kept the lady's secret, and at the same time declined to approach Mr Jabez Buster in the character of a suppliant. If his advocate and panegyrist had nothing more to say for him, it could not be uncharitable to conclude that the pretended saint was as bold a sinner as ever paid infamous courtship to religion, and as such was studiously to be avoided. I turned my attention from him to Tomkins. There was no grossness about him, no brutality, no abominable vice. In the hour of my defeat and desertion, he had extended to me his sympathy, and, more in sorrow than in anger, I am convinced he voted for my expulsion from the church when he found that his vote, and twenty added to it, would not have been sufficient to protect me. He could not act in opposition to the wishes of his friend and patron, Mr Clayton, but very glad would he have been, as every word and look assured me, to meet the wishes of us both, had that been practicable. If the great desire of Jehu Tomkins' heart could have been gratified, he never would have been at enmity with a single soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured, easy man; most desirous to be let alone, and not uneasily envious or distressed to see his neighbours jogging on, so long as he could do his own good stroke of business, and keep a little way before them. Jehu was a Liberal too—in politics and in religion—in every thing, in fact, but the one small article of money, and here, I must confess, the good dissenter dissented little from the best of us. He was a stanch Conservative in matters connected with the till. For his private life it was exemplary—at least it looked so to the world, and the world is satisfied with what it sees. Jehu was attentive to his business—yes, very—and a business life is not monotonous and dull, if it be relieved, as it was in this case, by dexterous arts, that give an interest and flavour to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes a customer would die—a natural state of things, but a great event for Jehu. First, he would "improve the occasion" to the surviving relatives—condole and pray with them. Afterwards he would improve it to himself, in his own little room, at night, when all the children were asleep, and no one was awake but Mrs Tomkins and himself. Then he would get down his ledger, and turn to the deceased's account—

"——How long it is thou see'st,
And he would gaze 'till it became much longer;"

"For who could tell whether six shirts or twelve were bought in July last, and what could be the harm of making those eight handkerchiefs a dozen? He was a strange old gentleman; lived by himself—and the books might be referred to, and speak boldly for themselves." Yes, cunning Jehu, so they might, with those interpolations and erasures that would confound and overcome a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste, how many times will four and four make nine? They generally did with Jehu. The best are liable to errors. It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had hundreds at command, and the accident was amended. How easy is it sometimes to give no bill at all! How very easy to apply, a few months afterwards, for second payment; how much more easy still to pocket it without a word; or, if discovered and convicted, to apologize without a blush for the mistake! No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do you justice—this is not so easy—it requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity to reach this pitch of human frailty and corruption. With regard to the domestic position of my interesting friend, it is painful to add, that the less that is said about it the better. In vain was his name in full, painted in large yellow letters, over the shop front. In vain was Bot. of Jehu Tomkins engraven on satin paper, with flourishes innumerable beneath the royal arms; he was no more the master of his house than was the small boy of the establishment, who did the dirty work of the place for nothing a-week and the broken victuals. If Jehu was deacon abroad, he was taught to acknowledge an archdeacon at home—one to whom he was indebted for his success in life, and for reminding him of that agreeable fact about four times during every day of his existence. I was aware of this delicate circumstance when I ventured to the linen-draper's shop on my almost hopeless mission; but, although I had never spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often seen her in the chapel, and I relied much on the feeling and natural tenderness of the female heart. The respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was in Fleet Street. The establishment consisted of Mrs Tomkins, première; Jehu, under-secretary; and four sickly-looking young ladies behind the counter. It is to be said, to the honour of Mrs Tomkins, that she admitted no young woman into her service whose character was not decided, and whose views were not very clear. Accordingly, the four young ladies were members of the chapel. It is pleasing to reflect, that, in this well-ordered house of business, the ladies took their turns to attend the weekly prayer meetings of the church. Would that I might add, that they were not severally met on these occasions by their young men at the corner of Chancery Lane, and invariably escorted by them some two or three miles in a totally opposite direction. Had Mrs Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult to decide what situation she would have adorned the most. She would have made a good man of business—an acute lawyer—a fine casuist—a great divine. Her attainments were immense; her self-confidence unbounded. She was a woman of middle height, and masculine bearing. She was not prepossessing, notwithstanding her white teeth and large mouth, and the intolerable grin that a customer to the amount of a halfpenny and upwards could bring upon her face under any circumstances, and at any hour of the day. Her complexion might have been good originally. Red blotches scattered over her cheek had destroyed its beauty. She wore a modest and becoming cap, and a gold eyeglass round her neck. She was devoted to money-making—heart and soul devoted to it during business hours. What time she was not in the shop, she passed amongst dissenting ministers, spiritual brethren, and deluded sinners. It remains to state the fact, that, whilst a customer never approached the lady without being repelled by the offensive smirk that she assumed, no dependent ever ventured near her without the fear of the scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully, when she pleased) upon her dark and inauspicious brow. What wonder that little Jehu was crushed into nothingness, behind his own counter, under the eye of his own wife!

THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES

PART II

In our last, we had occasion to speak sharply of that class of our aristocratic youth known by the name of fast fellows, and it may be thought that we characterized their foibles rather pointedly, and tinctured our animadversions with somewhat of undue asperity. This charge, however, can be made with no ground of reason or justice: the fact is, we only lashed the follies for which that class of men are pre-eminent, but left their vices in the shade, in the hope that the raw we have already established, will shame the fast fellows into a sense of the proprieties of conduct due to themselves and their station.

The misfortune is, that these fast fellows forget, in the pursuit of their favourite follies, that the mischief to society begins only with themselves: that man is naturally a servile, imitative animal; and that he follows in the track of a great name, as vulgar muttons run at the heels of a belwether. The poison of fashionable folly runs comparatively innocuous while it circulates in fashionable veins; but when vulgar fellows are innoculated with the virus, it becomes a plague, a moral small-pox, distorting, disfiguring the man's mind, pockpitting his small modicum of brains, and blinding his mind's eye to the supreme contempt his awkward vagaries inspire.

The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly in the spread of their servile imitation of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly profligacy at second-hand; and perhaps this is the worst trait in their character, for it is at once malicious and unwise: malicious, because the contemplation of humanity, degraded by bad example in high station, should rather be a source of secret shame than of devilish gratification: unwise, because their example is a discredit to their order, and a danger. To posses birth, fashion, station, wealth, power, is title enough to envy, and handle sufficient for scandal. How much stronger becomes that title—how much longer that handle—when men, enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it, not using, but abusing their good fortune!

We should not have troubled our heads with the fast fellows at all, if it were not absolutely essential to the full consideration of our subject, widely to sever the prominent classes of fashionable life, and to have no excuse for continuing in future to confound them. We have now done with the fast fellows, and shall like them the more the less we hear of them.

CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS

The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest. They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that there is better.

We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a few men of original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed, conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say, that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of birth and fortune—who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they feel, with the poet:

"At heros, et decus, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco."

It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.

This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the burden of responsible power.

One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed, is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious dead to the undistinguished living.

Without giving a catalogue raisonné of the slow fellows, (we use the term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,) we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists, astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.

Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the Penny Magazine and other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of fashionable screws, they take care never to subscribe to any thing. They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people can eat those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills; and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They talk of music, of which they know something—of books, of which they know little—and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always read "the last novel," which is as much as they can well carry; they know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but, if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before; they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, "honest friend," "my good man," and so on, but have very little heart, and less spirit.

They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it is a great curiosity in his line; if an entomologist, they are sure to send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from Bell's Life, Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree, or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "gagging," and genteel people "quizzing," but with a seriousness and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly ridiculous.

It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows, that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against it all their lives; but so it is;—the compensating power that rules material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it. Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule) are plebeian.

OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER

In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress of rational liberty, and of——but, in short, you have only to glance over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.

The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of thought or action, especially in state affairs.

Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days—no quackery, no mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst quondam leaders of the Treasury Benech—now that the camp-followers have followed the leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the statesman to be serious about serious matters.

With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way we always look at them.

In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and little comparatively to gain—men who have put in bail to a large amount for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us, because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician, even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice, where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member of our government receives no public money, nor is called right honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.

That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.

This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own, solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence, serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and which, filtering through the successive strata of society, clarify and purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their passage.

A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has furnished a stock argument to those who delight in "going a-head" faster than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor, likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on, through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in the eyes of the world what France now is—a people ready to sacrifice every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent, improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.

This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks, to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle, wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men's hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.

From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy. If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn—you are slowly but surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote cause of a revolution.

This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall: the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty; but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility, bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.

Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.

As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men, they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent establishment among the nobles of the land.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS

Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint; staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out of doors in cuerpo, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our men of fashion originate any thing outré, or likely to attract attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to scrupulosity.

Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it fits him—not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been born in it.

There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have seen—coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the world—coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!

Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into the atelier of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in his hand, to order such a coat! Order such a coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat—we say it with the generous indignation of a free Briton—is one of the exclusive privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!

The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age, or poverty of customers, vested the office of trouser-cutter and coat architect in the same functionary, coats were without soul, and "inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said, "ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.

The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West End fashionable artistes in riding coats, in dress coats, in cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards' and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring, which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's, within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill; in a word, to make it pounds—"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray, let us not talk of pounds—pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but artists, sir, artists are always remunerated with guineas!"

To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire, extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is deficient in aught, the accessorial toggery, such as hats, boots, choker, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by no means allowable latitude of brim—besides, borrowing the fashion of a hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion: content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man of fashion sedulously escheweth—a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of rain, has "taken the shine out of it."

In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well tied choker. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment. A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming choker, fine if you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing with his residual toggery: this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these, as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as possible.

Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone, or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below his waistband, as much as to say, "if you only knew what a watch I have inside!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.

A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose kids, and desire to see no more of them.

If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a pleasing contrast with that portion of the original chemise, vainly attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.

A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly propre, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:" he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the same, and has never been other than he now appears.