Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque
sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed
and commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of
politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees.
What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of
selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out Of the
world? What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his companion
as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and also to make
them feel excluded? Real service will not lose its nobleness. All
generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to be
concealed that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last
distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin
Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age: "Here lies Sir
Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend and persuaded his enemy: what his
mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if
a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his
children; and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body."
Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some
admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps
in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of
charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; some friend of
Poland; some Philhellene; some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the
second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some
well-concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill fame; some youth
ashamed of the favors of fortune and impatiently casting them on other
shoulders. And these are the centres of society, on which it returns for
fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt
to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in
the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the
Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant
heart who worshipped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who
constitute the natural aristocracy are not found in the actual
aristocracy, or only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum
is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the
infirmity of the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign when he
appears. The theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of
these. It divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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