Thus the Athens, taking her nominal and her real situation into the account, is both metropolitan and provincial: with regard to Scotland, she has the name, and assumes the pride, of being metropolitan in every thing; and in as far as concerns the administration of the laws as peculiar to Scotland, and in some degree, also, as concerning the internal discipline of the Scottish Kirk, she is really metropolitan; but in respect of Britain generally, she is nothing more than a provincial city, and the matters in which she is provincial have, to the full, as powerful an influence upon her rival character, as those in which she is, or flatters herself to be, metropolitan, have upon the character which she is anxious to assume. It is not, for instance, in the nature of things, that she can ever take the lead in matters of taste and fashion. Wherever the executive and legislative powers of the state are allocated, it is there that the gay and the rich will throng; and notwithstanding all the boasted elegance and taste of the Athens, no Scottish nobleman, or even squire, spends his winter there, if he can afford to spend it in London. Hence, the Athens is not only destitute of the source whence fashion flows, but she is also left without the means by which it could be supported: she is second-rate in her very nature, and also in those who form her leading society.
But it follows of necessary consequence, that a place which is second-rate in fashion and in wealth, must be second-rate also in every thing which fashion can encourage and wealth reward. A solitary student who prosecutes a science, or a solitary artist who practises an art, for its own sake, and with an inferior degree of regard to present honour and emolument, might perchance succeed better in the Athens than in the British metropolis. But, as British society is at present constituted, there are few who have the means, and apparently not many who have the desire, of proceeding in this way; and therefore, the place which attracts the fashion and the wealth, will also attract the superior talent, in consequence of the superior means of rewarding which it possesses; and upon this principle, it would be just as vain for the Athens to hope to rival London in any of the liberal arts, or elegant amusements, as it would be for the Scotch lords of Session, to rival the upper House of the British Parliament, the George Street Assembly Rooms to rival Almack’s, or the speeches of the Scotch advocates to be read with as much attention as those of the leading orators in the House of Commons.
Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland, the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than the average in the metropolis;—but, in all cases, where there is no necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed, the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people of any place,—that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the best and the readiest service.
For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish, and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile, however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither has nor can have the smallest title.
CHAPTER V.
POLITICS OF THE ATHENS.