Then, how characteristic of the class of which these children are the rising hope, is the taste displayed in their dress; they are attired with costly simplicity; or, if a fond mamma indulges in any little extravagance of childish costume, you see that it is the extravagance of taste; there is no tawdriness, no over-dressing, no little ones in masquerade, they dress appropriately, and, at the same time, distinctively.
Pretty souls! Many a time and oft have we wandered forth of the turbulent town, less to brace our unstrung nerves by the elastic air—less to bathe our wearied eyes in the green light of earth's bosom, than to drive away sad thoughts in the contemplation of your innocent gambols; with our stick; delight we to launch your mimic barks from the sandy shores of Serpentine; with you, glad are we to make haste, expecting the fastest sailer on the further shore; with you, we exult, once more a boy, in the speed of our trim-built favourite.
We love the old Newfoundland dog, ay, and the old footman, as much as you do, and could hang like you about both their necks; we wish you would not think us too big a boy to "stop" for you at single-wicket; imaginary hoops we trundle in your gleesome train; like you, we have a decided aversion to "taw," considering it not young-gentleman-like; we, too, forgetting that the governess is single and two-and-thirty, wonder on earth what can make governess so cross; we love you, when we see you hand in hand squiring your little sister, saluting your little sister's little friends, carrying their little parasols, and helping them over little stony places, like little gentlemen. Happy, happy dogs! we envy neither your birth nor the fortune that awaits you, nor repine we that our fate condemns us to tug the unremitting oar against that tide of fortune upon which, with easy sail, you will float lightly down to death; the whole heart, the buoyant spirit, the conscience yet unstung by mute reproach of sin; these things we envy you—not the things so mean a world can give, but the things which, though it cannot give, soon—alas, how soon—it takes away!
Contrast these children with the children of Mr Deputy Stubbs of the ward of Farringdon Within, or common Councillor Muggs of Bassishaw; they really do not look like animals of the same species.
The rising Stubbses and Muggses have heads shaped like a China orange, croppy hair, chubby chins, chubby cheeks, and blazing red and chubby noses—short, pursy, apoplectic necks, like their fathers—squab, four-square figures, mounted upon turned legs, with measly skins; so that, taken altogether, they are exceedingly offensive and disagreeable. Then they eat, these young, Stubbses and Muggses, how they do eat! then they are dressed, how they are dressed! five different tartans, four colours in velvet, seven sorts of ribbons, and a woolpack of fleecy hosiery, as if there wasn't another Stubbs or Muggs in existence; then how they annoy and infest, with bad manners and noise, the deputies and common-councilmen who visit at Stubbses and Muggses; how the maids "drat them" all day long, and how Mrs Stubbs and Mrs Muggs hate Mr Sucklethumb, the butterman, because he never "notices the child."
Another extraordinary phenomenon you cannot fail to observe in the children of the aristocracy; they seem to skip over the equivocal period, the neutral ground of human life, and emerge from the chrysaloid state of childhood, into the full and perfect imago of little lords and gentlemen, and little ladies, without any of those intermediate conditions of laddism, hobble-de-hoyism, or bread-and-butterishness, so prominently characteristic of the approaching puberty of the rest of the rising generation. Your Eton boy is not a boy, he is a young gentleman; your Lady Louisa is not a girl, she is only not yet "come out;" how to account for the peculiarity I know not, except the knowledge of the fact, that attention to the petites morales forms so great a part of the education of our rising aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and the mother never shows in the matter. Whether this, or any other peculiarity of the class, be an advantage or a disadvantage, natural or unnatural, right or wrong, it is not for the writer to say; he only points out what he has observed; and if he has failed to state it properly, let him be properly corrected.
Our aristocratic youth we take the liberty to classify, as they do coaches, of which they are so passionately fond, into
- FAST,
- SLOW.
The fast youths have several degrees of swiftness, from the railway pace, down through imperceptible gradations, to ten miles an hour, at which rate of going the fast fellows end, and the slow fellows begin.
Of these last there are also many varieties, from the tandem and tax-cart down to the waggon and dog-truck; and it cannot be denied, that as regards the former more especially, there is a great similarity between the youths themselves and the vehicles they govern; they go very fast, don't know what they are driving at, are propelled in any direction by much more sagacious animals than themselves, and are usually empty inside. The fast fellows are divided, moreover, into the occasional and permanently fast; and first of the occasional fast fellows:—