OF ARISTOCRACIES IN GENERAL.
The cumulative or aggregative property of wealth and power, and in a less degree of knowledge also, make up in time a consolidation of these elements in the hands of particular classes, which, for our present purposes, we choose to term an aristocracy of birth, wealth, knowledge, or power, as the case nay be. The word aristocracy, distinctive of these particular classes, we use in a conventional sense only, and beg leave to protest, in limine, against any other acceptation of the term. We use the word, because it is popularly comprehensive; the οι αριστοι, distinguished from the οι πολλοι : "good men," as is the value of goodness in the city; "the great," as they are understood by penners of fashionable novels; "talented," or "a genius," as we say in the coteries; but not a word, mark you, of the abstract value of these signs—their positive significations; good may be bad, great mean, talented or a genius, ignorant or a puppy. We have nothing to do with that; these are thy terms, our Public; thou art responsible for the use made of them. Thou it is who tellest us that the sun rises and sets, (which it does not,) and talkest of the good and great, without knowing whether they are great and good, or no. Our business is to borrow your recognized improprieties of speech, only so far as they will assist us in making ourselves understood.
When Archimedes, or some other gentleman, said that he could unfix the earth had he a point of resistance for his lever, he illustrated, by a hypothesis of physics, the law of the generation of aristocracies. Aristocracies begin by having a leg to stand on, or by getting a finger in the pie. The multitude, on the contrary, never have any thing, because they never had any thing, they want the point d'oppui, the springing-ground whence to jump above their condition, where, transformed by the gilded rays of wealth or power, discarding their several skins or sloughs, they sport and flutter, like lesser insects, in the sunny beams of aristocratic life.
Indeed, we have often thought that the transformation of the insect tribes was intended, by a wise Omnipotence, as an illustration (for our own benefit) of the rise and progress of the mere aristocracy of fashionable life.
The first condition of existence of these diminutive creatures, is the egg, or embryo state; this the anxious parent attaches firmly to some leaf or bough, capable of affording sufficient sustenance to the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and his finery in the dust.
How beautiful and how complete is the analogy between the insect and his brother butterfly of fashionable life! While yet an embryo, a worm, he grubs his way through a good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, fluttering, and conceited, idling, flirting, flaunting, philandering, until the summer of his ton is past, when he dies, or is arrested, and expiates a life of puerile vanity in Purgatory or the Queen's Bench.
Let the beginning once be made—the point of extreme depression once be got over: the cares of the daily recurring poor necessities of life—shelter, clothing, food, be of no moment: let a man taste, though it were next to nothing, of the delicious luxury of accumulation, let him, with every hoarded shilling, or half-crown, or pound, carry his head higher, smiling in secret at the world and his friends, and the aristocrat of wealth is formed: he is removed for ever from the hand-to-mouth family of man, and thenceforth represents his breeches pocket.
It is the same with the aristocrat of birth: some fortunate accident—some well-aimed and successful stroke of profligacy, or more rarely of virtue, redeems an individual from the common herd: the rays, mayhap, of royal favour fall upon him, and he begins to bloat; his growth is as the growth of the grain of mustard-seed, and in a little while he overshadoweth the land: Noble and Right Honourable are his posterity to the end of time.
There is a poor lad sitting biting his nails till he bites them to the quick, wearing out his heart-strings in constrained silence on the back benches of Westminster Hall: he maketh speeches, eloquent, inwardly, and briefless, mutely bothereth judges, and seduceth innocent juries to his No-side: he findeth out mistakes in his learned brethren, and chuckleth secretly therefor: he scratcheth his wig with a pen, and thinketh by what train of circumstantial evidence he may be able to prove a dinner: he laugheth derisively at the income-tax, and the collectors thereof: yet, when he may not have even a "little brown" to fly with, haply, some good angel, in mortal shape of a solicitor, may bestow on him a brief: rushing home to his chambers in the Temple, he mastereth the points of the case, cogitating pros and cons: he heareth his own voice in court for the first time: the bottled black-letter of years falleth from his lips, like treacle from a pipkin: he maketh good his points, winneth the verdict and the commendations of the judge: solicitors whisper that there is something in him, and clerks express their conviction that he is a "trump:" the young man eloquent is rewarded in one hour for the toil, rust, and enforced obscurity of years: he is no longer a common soldier of the bar; he steppeth by right divine, forth of the ranks, and becometh a man of mark and likelihood: he is now an aristocrat of the bar—perhaps, a Lyndhurst.
Again, behold the future aristocrat of literary life: to-day regard him in a suit of rusty black, a twice-turned stock, and shirt of Isabella colour, with an affecting hat: in and out of every bookseller's in the Row is he, like a dog in a fair: a brown paper parcel he putteth into your hand, the which, before he openeth, he demands how much cash down you mean to give for it: then, having unfolded the same, giveth you to understand that it is such a work as is not to be seen every day, which you may safely swear to. He journeyeth from the east to the west, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof, manuscript in hand: from Leadenhall Street, where Minerva has her press, to the street hight Albemarle, which John Murray delighteth to honour, but to no purpose: his name is unknown, and his works are nothing worth. Let him once make a hit, as it is termed, and it is no longer hit or miss with him: he getteth a reputation, and he lieth in bed all day: he shaketh the alphabet in a bag, calling it his last new work, and it goeth through three editions in as many days: he lordeth it over "the trade," and will let nobody have any profit but himself: he turneth up his nose at the man who invites him to a plain dinner, and utterly refuseth evening parties: he holdeth conversaziones, where he talks you dead: he driveth a chay, taketh a whole house, sporteth a wife and a minute tiger: in brief, he is now an aristocrat of letters.
The materials for the growth and preservation of these several aristocracies abound in London; and no where on the earth have we the same facilities for the study and investigation of their family likenesses and contrasts, their points of contact and repulsion.