Appendix

331 caused the blood of noble Hungarian females to be whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime than devotion to their country, and its tall and heroic sons. The middle classes of course there are some exceptions-admire the aristocracy, and consider them pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the Emperor of Russia, till he became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age, ugliness, and misfortune! The beauideal with those of the lower classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor : look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. This person makes his grand débût in the year 'thirty-nine, at a public meeting in the principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood with the character of a man worth a million pounds, who is to make everybody's fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own, though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain individuals who are his confederates. But in the year 'forty-nine, he is really in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended to be worth ten years before-he is worth a million pounds. By what means has he come by them? By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to be paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their organization, have introduced crimes and language into England to which it was previously almost a stranger-by purchasing, with paper, shares by hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs, inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest, utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost instantly subjected. But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no doubt of the fact he has not made people's fortunes, at least those whose fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away; but his own he has made, emphatically made it; he is worth a million pounds. Hurrah for the millionnaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red brick which he has

built on the estate which he has purchased in the neighbourhood of the place of his grand débût, in which every species of architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, is employed in caricature-who hears of the grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal dining-room, the hundred wax-candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the ocean of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the head, and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims, "Well! if he a'n't bang up, I don't know who be; why he beats my lord hollow!" The mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through the streets in an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst his attendant out-riders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his side, stout as the wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and bedizened out like her whose person shone with the jewels of plundered Persia, stares with silent wonder, and at last exclaims "That's the man for my vote!" You tell the clown that the man of the mansion has contributed enormously to corrupt the rural innocence of England; you point to an incipient branch railroad, from around which the accents of Gomorrah are sounding, and beg him to listen for a moment, and then close his ears. Hodge scratches his head and says, Well, I have nothing to say to that; all I know is, that he is bang up, and I wish I were he;" perhaps he will add-a Hodge has been known to add-" He has been kind enough to put my son on that very railroad; 'tis true the company is somewhat queer, and the work rather killing, but he gets there half-a-crown a day, whereas from the farmers he would only get eighteen-pence. You remind the mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all has been dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says, "Well, the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turn-out he has !" One was once heard to add, "I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and that was a gentleman's

walley, who was much like him. It is true that he is rather under-sized, but then madam, you know, makes up for all."

CHAPTER V

Subject of Gentility continued.

IN the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so considered by different classes; by one class power, youth, and epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another class pride, stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly,1 as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling-a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another—a liberal education-absence of narrow viewsgenerosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a

gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make fortunes by the getters up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest dealing, are decidedly not gentlefolks. Now as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some standard or other, and yet be no gentleman, so it is demonstrable that a person may have no pretensions to

1 Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words. Gentle and gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is glittering or gaudy. A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can be genteel.

gentility, and yet be a gentleman. For example, there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr. Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author-writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page-edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does he pawn

the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, tress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime does he perpetrate-what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?—unless it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson -a clown-who will, perhaps, shout-"I say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?"

Mis

The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel, compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour, should read a salutary lesson. The generality of his countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility, than to violate the laws of honour or morality. They will shrink from carrying their own carpet-bag, and from speaking to a person in seedy raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly indifferent. Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage decency, or is unallied to profligacy; is

not ashamed to speak to a beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify a laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or what the world calls low. He sees that many things which the world looks down upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world condemns; he sees that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian, which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college-hall. If he learns smithery, he also learns- -ah! what does he learn to set against smithery?-the law? No; he does not learn the law, which, by the way, is not very genteel. Swimming? Yes, he learns to swim. Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world-at least the genteel part of it-acts very wisely in setting its face against it; for to swim you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his clothes? Come, he learns horsemanship; a very genteel accomplishment, which every genteel person would gladly possess, though not all genteel people do.

Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that he prizes a thing or a person because they are ungenteel? That he is not ready to take up with everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the writer is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an over-regard for gentility, which prevented the hero from accepting, when on the brink of starvation, an ungenteel