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CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. *
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Thk above would , in our opinion , have been a more appropriate title for Mr . Bulwer ' s book , than the one which he has selected . At any rate , it best describes the impression which the volumes make upon our mind , and the purpose to which it is our intention
to apply them . To a large extent , indeed , the topics are coincident , for aristocracy is the distinguishing feature of' England and the English ; ' and in its influence reaches to and colours every gradation of society , from the monarchy which is nominally above it , down to that very pauperism which may be inconsiderately
thought so immeasurably below it . Our peculiarity and our misfortune , is not merely that we have an aristocracy , but that we are an aristocratical people . Happily there are antagonistic principles at work , which may be hoped ultimately to correct the evils to which the national character and condition is thus
subjected . There always have been such principles in operation , and they are associated with the names of those of the greatest men , whose fame is our country ' s fame , who appear on the pages of history as the heralds of national improvement . In introducing a sounder mode of philosophizing , in defending or enlarging the liberty of the subject , and in exciting the energies of
humanity on behalf of the slave or the oppressed , our philosophers , patriots , and philanthropists have usually had to struggle with the spirit of their age , embodied in the aristocracy . It has sometimes been long after their death , and only when the truths which they proclaimed had , by the accumulation of knowledge , become
irresistible , that their triumph was achieved . In scarcely an instance did any great improvement , intellectual , moral , or political , originate with men who stood well with the world during their lives and labours ; who were courted , rewarded , honoured , and patronized by the great , and regarded as benefactors by the multitude whom those great ones ruled ; and who ended their thriving
lives in circumstances of peace and affluence . Our Miltons kept school for bread and cheese . Our Marvels dined on the pickings of cold mutton bones . Our Sidneys perished on the scaffold . The power which they opposed consents to join in praising their memories , when it thinks they can no longer do it any harm . So it was in Judea . Build and garnish the sepulchres of the prophets
of a past gene rat ion ; vilify , persecute , and destroy the prophets of the present generation . Aristocracy and improvement are incompatible terms . Except indeed that sort of improvement which is some persons' entire conception of the idea—higher title , greater wealth , and a more central ensconcement in the circle of fashionable exclusiveness . And while , from the nature of the case , a * England and the EnglUh . By E . L . Bulwer , 2 vois . Bentley .
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585
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No . 81 . 2 T
Characteristics Of English Aristocracy. *
CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY . *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 585, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/1/
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