lectures and published books, and made of these places is always translated to himself known for his study and exclu- mean, "I hope you are solvent," and "how sive attention to one of the "thousand d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to ills that flesh is heir to:" the latter shall" doing a bill." ern courts of Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing. Make your way into GermanyWhat do you find there? an aristocracy of go through the hands of dozens of men Go abroad, to Rome for example-You skilful in that branch of the law connected are smothered beneath the petticoats of an with the particular injury. So it is with ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northevery thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both, that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute division of labor, and the minute division of labor reacts upon the market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs of a legitimate superiority. Hence the superior intelligence of work-functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon ing men, of all classes, high and low, in the everybodies; from Herr Von, Aulic counWorld of London; hence that striving after excellence, that never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place: hence the improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow; hence speculation, enterprise, unknown to the inhabitants of less extended spheres of action. Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent, genius, skill, tact, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better classes, stand prominently before their fellows socially, or, that one is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after any body in the World of London. cillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English people, as In this respect, no capital, no country on respects the supremacy of honest industry, the face of the earth, resembles us; every-its independent exercise, and the comparawhere else you will find a leading class, tive insignificance of aristocracies, convengiving a tone to society, and moulding it in tionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there some one or other direction; a predomina- we find a provincial and a Parisian aristocting set, the pride of those who are in, the racy-the former a servile mob of placeenvy of those who are below it. There is men, one in fifty, at least, of the whole popnothing of this kind in London; here every ulation; and the latter-oh! my poor head, man has his own set, and every man his what a clanjaffrey of journalistes, feuilletonproper pride. In every set, social or pro- istes, artistes, dramatists, novelists, vaudivelfessional, there are great names, successful listes, poets, literary ladies, lovers of litermen, prominent; but the set is nothing the ary ladies, hommes de lettres, claqueurs, litgreater for them: no man sheds any lustre térateurs, gérants, censeurs, rapporteurs, and upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister le diable boiteux verily knows what else! a whit more thought of because he and These people, with whom, or at least Lyndhurst are of the same profession. with a great majority of whom, common Take a look at other places: in money-sense, sobriety of thought, consistency f getting places, you find society following, purpose, steady determination in action, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed 'Change every man knows the worth of by their vivacity, empressement, prejudice, every other man, that is to say, what he is worth. A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is there a man good for so much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the aristocracy and party zeal, form a prominent, indeed, the prominent aristocracy of the salons: and only conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse, enjoying station without property; abound- and myriads of nebula of no magnitudes at ing in maddening and exciting influences, all: we move harmoniously in our several but lamentably deficient in those hard- orbits, minding our own business, satisfied headed, ungenius-like qualities of patience, with our position, thinking, it may be, with prudence, charity, forbearance, and peace- harmless vanity, that we bestow more light lovings, of which their war-worn nation, upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes more than any other in Europe, stands in of all terrestrial stargazers are upon us.need. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks, are When, in the name of goodness, is the our meteors, our aurora, our comets, our heart of the philanthropist to be gladdened falling-stars, shooting athwart our hemiswith the desire of peace fulfilled over the phere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkearth? When are paltry family intrigues ness: our tuft-hunters are satellites of Juto cease, causing the blood of innocent piter, invisible to the naked eye: our clear thousands to be shed? When will the aris- frosty atmosphere that sets us all. a-twinktocracy of genius in France give over jing- ling is prosperity, and we, too, have our ling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. "gloire," and "victoire," and apply them- The noonday of our own bustling time beselves to objects worthy of creatures en- holds us dimly; but posterity regards us dowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if as it were from the bottom of a well. Time, they must have fighting, if it is their nature, that exact observer, applies his micrometer if the prime instinct with them is the thirst to every one of us, determining our rank of human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to bleed nations with their pen! Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine. To resume the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has an ecclesiastical Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great aristocracies-the military, place-hunting, and foolscap. among celestial bodies without appeal, and from time to time enrolling in his ephemeris such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages. If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order to true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal equality of outward condition, that republicanism of every day life, which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming interest. Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great favor, that Mr. Alexander Scaldhead, Now, then, attend to what we are going the phrenologist, is to be there, and that we to say: London is cursed with no predomi- can have our "bumps" felt for nothing; or nating, no overwhelming, no characteristic that the Chevalier Doembrownski (a Lonaristocracy. There is no set or clique of don pickpocket in disguise) is expected to any sort or description of men that you can recite a Polish ode, accompanying himself point to, and say, that's the London set.- on the Jew's harp; we are not bored with We turn round and desire to be informed the misconduct of the librarian, who never what set do you mean: every salon has its has the first volume of the last new novel, set, and every pot-house its set also; and or invited to determine whether Louisa the frequenters of each set are neither en- Fitzsmythe or Angelina Stubbsville deserves vious of the position of the other, nor dis- to be considered the heroine; we are not satisfied with their own: the pretenders to required to be in raptures because Mrs. Alfashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of fred Shaw or Clara Novello are expected, high life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel or to break our hearts with disappointment set, who want the proper self-respecting because they didn't come: the arrival, perpride which every distinct aristocracy main-formances, and departure, of Ducrow's hortains in the World of London. ses, or Wombwell's wild beasts, affect us We are a great firmament, a moonless with no extraordinary emotion; even Assiazure, glowing with stars of all magnitudes, zes time concerns most of us nothing. In London, every min is responsible for himself, and his position is the consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist, or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity. Society marks the line between the public and the social man; and this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England, will enable a public man to confound. Then, again, how vulgar, how common- time d'avantage : ou ecarte tout cet attirail qui place in London is the aristocracy of wealth; t'est étranger, pour pénétrer jusq'a toi qui n'es of Mrs. Grub, who, in a provincial town, qu'un fat." keeps her carriage, and is at once the envy and the scandal of all the ladies who have to proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr. Bill Wright, the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent. Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at Chamberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish balls, and Mr. Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera; we are not overdone by Mr. Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs. Bill Wright, or the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr. Bill Wright the younger: in a word, we don't care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish connexion. What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from that of a parvenu, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the latter. The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers nothing. What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord mayor's footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make that poor lick-pate a common laughing-stock? No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery and imposture. When I say we, I speak of the yast multitudes forming the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We pass on to what a man is, over who he is, and what he has; and, with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait-the inimitable La Bruyere-when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we exclaim-"Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six bêtes qui te trainent, tu penses qu'on t'en es Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing; and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like jackals, and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way, yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the rest of mankind. These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white chokers, and you will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses. This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists, adventuring politi cians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labor, or who feel that they do not possess power to go alone. sumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who, successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques, coteries, and conversazionés, and all the littleness of inferior Public men in London appear naked at reproach him for sinking thus beneath the the bar of public opinion; laced coats, rib-ills that the "scholar's life assail." The ands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, be- kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued cause these things are common, and have to the gates of a prison by a mercenary the common fate of common things, to be wretch who fattened upon the produce of cheaply estimated. The eye is satiated that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid with them, they come like shadows, so de- him be of good cheer. A thousand names, part; but they do not feed the eye of the that fondly live in the remembrance of our mind; the understanding is not the better hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell for such gingerbread; we are compelled to the same story of early want, and long neglook out for some more substantial nutri- lect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will ment, and we try the inward man, and test he reproach himself, saying, "What am I, his capacity. Instead of measuring his that I should quail before the misery that bumps, like a land-surveyor, we dissect his broke not minds like these? What am I, brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, that I should be exempt from the earthly whether he be high or low, in whatever de- fate of the immortals?" partment of life, not by what he says he can Nor marvel, then, that men who have do, or means to do, but by what he has done. passed the fiery ordeal, whose power has By this test is every man of talent tried in been tried and not found wanting, whose London; this is his grand, his formal diffi- nights of probation, difficulty, and despair, culty, to get the opportunity of showing are past, and with whom it is now noon, what he can do, of being put into circula- should come forth, with deportment modest tion, of having the chance of being tested, and subdued, exempt from the insolent aslike a shilling, by the ring of the customer and the bite of the critic; for the opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to wedge in, the purchase whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away. Patience, the courage of the man of talent, he must exert for many a dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead an undis-fry that such men should have parasites, cerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away. Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armor, and preparing himself for the fight that he still believes will come, and in which his spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night yet shrouds him he must labor, and with patient, and happily for him, if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and he will yet be recompensed "by that time and chance which happeneth to all." And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee, often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will mutely and followers, and hangers-on; or that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should live for and with such men alone. But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of pseudo talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious fools! Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and claqueurs, and coteries, and the would-if-Icould-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pes-out the hope of reaching one of those comtilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individ- fortable stations, hope would be extinguish. uals who would tear the coats off their ed, talent lie fallow, energy be limited to backs, in desperate adherence to the skirts. the mere attainment of subsistence; great Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for things would not be done, or attempted, greater evils:-Time misspent, industry and we would behold only a dreary level of misdirected, labor unrequited, because use- indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true lessly or imprudently applied: poverty and of professions, in which, after a season of isolation, families left unprovided for, pen- severe study, a term of probation, the know. sions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, ledge acquired in early life sustains the subcriptions! professor, with added experience of every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and figures! True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no social preeminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of themselves: they are individually admired, not worshipped as a congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar, the man of rank, the politician, the millionaire, must merge in the gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or submitted to any where else. A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the conveyancer, the equity draftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labor to make a respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with, recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pill-box and pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking, shouldershrugging, bamboozling weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion. The rewards of intellectual labor applied to purposes of remote, or not immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair and legitimate remuneration for independent labor, but they have their several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigor crave some haven of repose, or, at least, some mitigated toil, with greater security of income: some place of honor with repose-the ambition of declining years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and For the clergyman, it is only necessary other professions in this country, has often that he should be orthodox, humble, and been insisted upon with great reason: it pious: that he should on no occasion, right has been said, and truly said, that not only or wrong, set himself in opposition to his do these prizes reward merit already passed ecclesiastical superiors; that he should through its probationary stages, but serve preach unpretending sermons; that he as inducements to all who are pursuing the should never make jokes, nor understand same career. It is not so much the exam- the jokes of another: this is all that he ple of the prize-holder, as the prize, that wants to get on respectably. If he is amstimulates men onward and upward: with-bitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, |