The advantage of our nobility over the plebeian classes is said to be in the blood and in the breed—the Norman breed, we suppose—the high noses and arched eyebrows date from the Conquest. We plead guilty to the insinuation conveyed in the expression—‘the coronet face’—and bow with some sort of pride to the pride of birth. But this hypothesis is hardly compatible with the evident improvement in the present generation of noblemen and gentlemen by the intermarriages with rich heiresses, or the beautiful Pamelas of an humbler stock. Crossing the breed has done much good; for the actual race of Bond-street loungers would make a very respectable regiment of grenadiers; and the satire on Beau Didapper, in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, has lost its force.
LXI
The tone of society in Paris is very far from John Bullish. They do not ask what a man is worth, or whether his father is owner of a tin-mine or a borough—but what he has to say, whether he is amiable and spirituel. In the case (unless a marriage is on the tapis) no one inquires whether his account at his banker’s is high or low; or whether he has come in his carriage or on foot. An English soldier of fortune, or a great traveller, is listened to with some attention as a marked character; while a booby lord is no more regarded than his own footman in livery. The blank after a man’s name is expected to be filled up with talent or adventures, or he passes for what he really is, a cypher.
LXII
Our young Englishmen in Paris do not make much figure in the society of Frenchmen of education and spirit. They stumble at the threshold in point of manners, dress, and conversation. They have not only to learn the language, but to unlearn almost every thing else. Both words and things are different in France; our raw recruits have to get rid of a host of prejudices, and they do it awkwardly and reluctantly, and if they attempt to make a regular stand, are presently out-voted. The terms gothic and barbarous are talisman to strike them dumb. There is, moreover, a clumsiness in both their wit and advances to familiarity, that the spiteful brunettes on the other side of the water do not comprehend, and that subjects them to constant sneers; and every false step adds to their confusion and want of confidence. But their lively antagonists are so flushed with victory and victims to their loquacity and charms, that they are not contented to lecture them on morals, metaphysics, sauces, and virtù, but proceed to teach them the true pronunciation and idiom of the English tongue. Thus a smart French widow having blundered by saying, ‘I have never made a child;’ and perceiving that it excited a smile, maintained, for three whole days, against a large company, that it was better than saying, ‘I never had a child.’
LXIII
The Parisian trip (say what they will) is not grace. It is the motion of a puppet, and may be mimicked, which grace cannot. It may be different from the high, heavy-heeled walk of the Englishwoman. Is it not equally remote from the step (if step it may be called) of an Andalusian girl?
LXIV
It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that he is the only animal that dresses. He is the only being who is coxcomb enough not to go out of the world naked as he came into it; that is ashamed of what he really is, and proud of what he is not; and that tries to pass off an artificial disguise as himself. We may safely extend the old maxim, and say that it is the tailor that makes both the gentleman and the man. Fine feathers make fine birds—this lie is the motto of the human mind. Dress a fellow in sheepskin, and he is a clown—dress him in scarlet, and he is a gentleman. It is then the clothes that makes all the difference; and the moral agent is simply the lay-figure to hang them on. Man, in short, is the only creature in the known world, with whom appearances pass for realities, words for things; or that has the wit to find out his own defects, and the impudence and hypocrisy, by merely concealing them, to persuade himself and others that he has them not. Teniers’s monkeys, habited like monks, may be thought a satire on human nature—alas! it is a piece of natural history. The monks are the larger and more solemn species, to be sure. Swift has taken a good bird’s eye view of man’s nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a ‘damned spot’ to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos. The words Heretic or Papist, Jew or Infidel, labelled on those who differ from us, stand us in lieu of sense or decency. If a man be mean, he sets up for economy; if selfish, he pretends to be prudent; if harsh, firm; and so on. What enormities, what follies are not undertaken for the love of glory?—and the worst of all, are said to be for the glory of God! Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!