Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Thirdly, for all populous and highly civilized nations, it is an
indirect necessity made known in a thousand ways, that some adequate
control should preside over their spirit of manners. This can be
effected only through a court and a body of nobles. And thence it
arises, that, in our English public intercourse, through every class,
(even the lowest of the commercial,) so much of respectful gravity and
mutual consideration is found. Now, therefore, as the means of
maintaining in strength this aristocratic influence, we request every
thoughtful man to meditate upon the following proposition. The class
even of our gentry breeds a body of high and chivalrous feeling; and
very much so by unconscious sympathy with an order above themselves. But
why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely
found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen? It is because,
in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought
to be separated from the strife of the world. The fretful collision with
rivalship and angry tempers, insensibly modifies the demeanour of every
man. But the British nobleman, intrenched in wealth, enjoys an immunity
from this irritating discipline. He is able to act by proxy: and all
services of unpleasant contest he devolves upon agents. To have a class
in both sexes who toil not, neither do they spin--is the one _conditio
sine qua non_ for a real nobility.
Fourthly as the leaders in a high morality of honour, and a jealous
sense of the obligation attached to public engagements, our nobility has
tightened the bonds of national sensibility beyond what is always
perceived. "This is high matter," as Burke says in a parallel case; and
we barely touch it. We shall content ourselves with asking--Could the
American frauds in the naval war, calling sixty-four-gun ships by the
name of frigates, have been suffered in England? Could the American
doctrine of _repudiation_ have prospered with us? Yet are the Americans
Englishmen, wanting only a nobility.
The times are full of change: it is through the Conservative body itself
that certain perils are now approaching patrician order: if _that_
perishes, England passes into a new moral condition, wanting all the
protections of the present.
* * * * *
JACK STUART'S BET ON THE DERBY, AND HOW HE PAID HIS LOSSES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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