Meaning them ne’er to glow to deeds of fire,
But sent like lightnings, in their fatal flame
To sear all verdure from the smiling plain!
Take back the power of song, the Muses’ fire,
And grant that bliss which humbler themes in spire.
THE WOULD-BE-GENTEEL LADY.
BY MRS. CHARLES SEDGWICK.
In such a country as ours—a country of “workies”—where there exists no privileged class, falsely so called, unless idleness and ennui are privileges, one might suppose that a passion for gentility would be confined to the fashionable circles of the city; that the bees would as soon be found giving preference to fashionable flowers, or aiming at a fashionable style of architecture in their hives, as the busy matrons and maidens of New England, for instance, directing their thoughts, mainly, to genteel modes of living, dressing, and behaving.
Doctor Johnson derives the word genteel, from the Latin word gentilis: meaning “of the same house, family name, ancestry, etc.” Its meaning has, probably, undergone as many modifications as the word heretic, of which the most accurate definition I have ever heard was given by a young boy of twelve: “A heretic is a person that don’t believe as you do.” It is plain he had not obtained this information from books, but from society. In like manner an ungenteel person is, with many, one who does not live, dress, and act, in all respects, as they do. The orthodoxy of one age or country, is the heresy of another; and the gentility of one, is the vulgarity of another.
Thus it is with fashion, the handmaid of gentility; who has been well described as a jade that stalks through one country with the cast-off clothes of another; and the modes and forms of gentility are as variable as the wayward humors of those vacant-minded people who lead the fashion.