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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

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    THE AVENGER NEWSPAPER.

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    Untitled Article

    of them in supreme honour . But wealth , as we have hinted , is almost a sine quA non with our devotees of the genteel , lhat eminent professor of propriety , my Lord Chesteefi ^ ld , who condemned a proverb , arid who sneered at anything like Christian virtue as something not appertaining to high life , equally condemned anything like poverty , which , indeed , as we have said , is certainly ungenteel , and found accompanying all sorts of common and vulgar people . Passion or emotion of any kind , crying or laughter , pity or extreme kindliness , do not come within the level plane of this quality : and bravery or force , or terror—yes , eyen ^ the terrors of death itself ruffle the feelings of those who have lived m its fashionable precincts . " One would not , sure , look frightful when one ' s dead ; So , Betty , give this cheek a little red , "

    lisps the dying coquette ; and the genteel French marshal , as we all know , who was surprised by the enemy in his tent , thouerht it a disgrace to fly without his full-bottomed wig , and so was killed in his attempt to ' rescue it . To the excessive attachment to this quality we owe a thousand anomalies . For its sake fathers and mothers are content to toil on and pinch themselves , so that their children achieve a position . For this sake a man will rather pay a large rent for an uncomfortable house in a fashionable neighbourhood , than a small one for a good house in a second-rate quarter of the town- for this we call our Britannia metal " plate , our gigs carriages , our boy in buttons a footman , and our unpretending cottage a hall , a lodge , or a villa . For it , too , our suburbs break school called colleges

    out in curious highly-sounding names ; our s are , and our teachers' houses academies . Occasionally it apes humility , wears hodden grey instead of broad cloth , and eats and digests dishes which nobody likes , because they are eminently " genteel . Through it also , the painter who has perpetrated the portrait ot a duchess , can , although a mere dauber , reckon upon , any number ot the wives of rich citizens as his sitters ; the author , who may be a mere dunce , will be the vogue in the libraries , and the preacher whose sermons arean injudicious mixture of nonsense anaVtustian , ot bathos and livperbole , will find himself surrounded by a ^ fashionable congregation : A reputation for fashion arid gentility has . jn deed , made the fortune of more than one tailor , arid the want ot it has broken many a good man s heart with that sickness winch is born of hope deferred . So that , if we take these things into ^ onsiderainculcated ttie first

    " Away , then , with this diabolical invention of gentility , which kills natural kindliness and honest friendship . Proper pride , indeed Rank and precedence , forsooth ! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie , and should be flung into the fire . Organise rank and precedence ! That was well for the masters of ceremonies of the former ages . Come . forward , some great marshalI andorganise equality in society , and yotir rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold sticks . If this is npt gospel truth—if the world does notr tend to this—if hereditary great-man worship is not a humbug and ^ idolatry—rlet its have the Stuabts back again , and crop the Free Press ' s ears in the pillory ! " , __ , ¦ <— . ¦ ¦ _ _

    tongues ; to affix his theses to the gates of the town , and to dis pute with the learned ; nor must he be ignorant of art . If he possesses aUthese * he may then say with Heywood , — " I am a gentleman : and , by my birth , Companion with a king ' : a king ' s no more . • I am possessed of many fair revenues , Sufficient to maintain a- gentleman . Touching mymind , I ' m studied in all arts '; The riches of my thoughts , arid of my time Have been a good proficient . "

    Add to this what Shaftesbueysays , that " reading , good company , and reflection , the taste of beauty , and the relish of what is decent , just , and amiable , perfects the character of a gentleman , " and we shall find that now-a-days we do not meet with many such . We cannot all be so . We must be content to be what we can bebrave , gentle , generous , and wise . We must not stand too much upon our gentility . We must honour all men . There cannot be a surer proof of low origin , or of an innate meanness of disposition , than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel . And herein lies the true secret of that repose and finish in the manners of a man truly great either by birth or by mental ^ acquirements A great man never strains and endeavours to make himself greater

    than he is , any more than a giant tries to stand upon tiptoe ; both are conscious of their own true height ; and this consciousness is so true , that it is found and recognised , not only in the leaders of ton in Paris or London , but in the Hindu and Chinese gentleman , and in the Red Indian of the far west . But , after all , the true secret of all gentlemanhood is a quiet and humble bearing , and a disposition to look upon others to be as good as oneself . A course of reading in the Epistles of St . John or St . Paul will do more to form a gentleman than the quintessence of St . Eteehond and Chestebfiexd , with all the books of etiquette that were ever published to boot . Let us then cry with the author of " Vanity Fair , "

    tion , wVsliall find that gentility , although as ^ or all virtues in some quarters , is not without its evil : the miseries , too ; of the would-be genteel , which are fair mark s for all the satirists of the Thackerayian school , are not to be despised because of their smallness ; a _ mosquito is a much less formidable animal than a boa constrictor , yet ^ ve doubt if the gross amount of misery occasioned by the one does not far exceed that by the other . Hut the misery of' those parvenu people , of those who when merely m town society aspire to that of the county families ; or who , when knowing respectable tradespeople will determine to visit the dwellers in the squares , has never been written , and assuredly , if written , would never be pitied . When the stupid old frog in the fable burst himself , endeavouring to be as large as an ox , no one pitied him as he lay gasping his life away ; and when , as is often the case , an attempt to he highly genteel ends in the bankruptcy

    ^ ur 4 ; , a . b «^ oi » mi » Moner ^ nstead ^ f ^ y ^ strongest indignation . „ ' . . - •" , ' v T We have got thus far without any definition of the word . In fact , the quality is quintessential , and evaporates when you try to define it , There are those who utterly deny it . When the Dutclicsse , in Webstee's play , asks Antonio his opinion of marriage , he says ,- ^ - " I take it , as those that deny purgatory ; . . ' ¦ "Tis either heaven or hell , there ' s no third place in it . So we may define gentility by utterly ignoring it . ' . There , is vulgarity and nobility , or the spirit of the gentleman ; but gentility is an assumption after all which entirely declares the spirit of the snob and nothing less . We can have no half-and-half schemes here . It does not follow , let Sir Beenaed Burke say what he may , that the spirit of a gentleman is lost because ho engages m t

    trade . He xnny not bp able , beraldically speaking , o Dear arms ;—they may bo lost to him ; but hernldry is , after all , but a . very weak invention , —one of the dark ages , when men were unenlightened and untaught . The ideal gentleman we shall never meet again , it indeed ho ever existed ; he does not exist now ; he was to be the preux cheval ' wr of the time , the Admirable Ceickton ; but the time has long-since past when we believed in Admirable Ceicutons . The man who can do everything mny do for romance , but we are content to do one thing , and do it well . Lot us see what the ideal gentleman was and must be . Ho must be of gentle blocd , that is , gentleman on fnther ' a and mother ' s side for seven generations . His ancestors must be sans tache . Ho himself , tiltfencebe

    well grown , brave , skilled in arms ? . He must run , , , a perfect horseman , know well the terms and practices of the gentle . craft ; be a huntsman , ft falconer * a perfect woods man ,. a courtier , and a very Euphues in the choice of his phrases . His clothes must be of the Intest fashion , his horse and hound the best of their kind , his armour point device . His heart must be ever open , his purso at the command of all who aek , He must succour the unfortunate ^ engage in battle for those who are wronged , and be a devoted slave to every fair Indyo . Learned he must be , or he would ' bo a clown : ho must dance well , and bear himself gracefully in all things , bo able to " break " a deer , and to carve a kid , to arrange tho minstrels in the hall , to act as an ambassador , and to lead an army , and , should occasion require it , to speak in many

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    T > ROBABLY there is scarcely an editor who lias not at sometime i- or other been plagued to make his journal the vehicle of some private controversy , to spread a scandal or to smother one . He is forced to be very obstinate in his refusals , or very arbitrary in Ins selections . It is only to the private controversies of any public men that the columns of the Times , * or any of our more important newspapers , ore thrown open ; the magnitude of the personage carries it , riot the enormity of the wrong . The circle may be a very —wide-oner ^ ndeedr-throug h-which—a-rnost--damaging—slandet-is spreading ; but if it is not quite wide , or quite lofty enough , a public vindication is sought in vain , unless the matter is carried into the law courts . There are three reasons for the chariness of editors on such points , all of them ample : first , that such controversies are generally interminable ; second , that they are generally uninteresting ; third , that they are generally unpaid for . Only one paper , and that recently established , has had the generosity to av * « rmvHnn nf its snaee to those who have , or fancy they have ,

    , wrongs to vindicate . It is called The Dial—nota bene , not ; the Severi Dials but the space allowed for combat is limited , and an affair " must' be settled in a few shots . " It would require seven to get through the work thoroughly . We applaud the motive , but commiserate the editor , if he is compelled to do justice to hw idea , and to his \ mpaying clients . No conceivable bribe could induce the Times to print a controversy , even as an advertisement , unless the subject were one that tickled its own , or would be likely to tickle its readers'fancy . . , . It is a strange thing in England when there is a great general public demand , if no one is ready to supply his private wants by catering to public ones ; yet hero wo have one , quite enough to Annnnvn ™ mil- snirits of adventure , and to confer a public benefit

    in more than one particular . There are two sine quibus nuns lor our future Dijudicator , Moderator , Vindicator , Asthma , Avenger , or whatever its proprietors may please to denominate it : that it should stick faithfully to private controversy , and ^ that the controversialists should pay handsomely . We would have no bitter iambics from disappointed poets , and unsaleable essayists ; to them the public ia deaf , or by them sufficiently afflicted already ; no Jameiits from any suffering members of the Cue * family , com-

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    June 23 , I 860 . ] The Leader and Saturday Analyst . 591

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    * Under certain circumstances the Times will . enter ' . not on Jy *" ° * ?™; troversy , but into the details of the life of an individual not of sufficient public Importance to justify any such . dissection . . Many of our cy ders may remember a gratuitous sketch of the private history of' 011 ^ our popular preachers ; following him through his c f » . « "X ° uat 0 ? f a ' searching into IiIb -whereabouts at different period * , with all tbo «««» J ' * police detectivo . We know little and carcass about the f' ^ imn i in question , but the paragraph was a . disgraceful one , worthy ot tho pigej of the old fStUMst , and could only have boon intrudod upon the puwie from eorno motivo of private malignity .

    The Avenger Newspaper.

    THE AVENGER NEWSPAPER .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 23, 1860, page 591, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2353/page/11/