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Untitled Article
picture of England and the English must needs be largely occupied with a full length portrait or aristocracy , we may reasonably expect from Mr . Buhver , that this should be the most valuable portion of his work . He is himself a twig of the great old tree , though happily grafted with other fruit . His ' old family / and his early associations , are corrected by his talents and his principles . He is no natural born enemy of aristocracy . He looks at it from within , and is in it . while there is too much in him for him
to be of it . Of the second grade of the middle class , and of the lower orders ., he probably knows little ,, except from books , and from election and other public meetings ; and the evidence given before parliamentary committees , or commissions . Of these means , he has doubtless made good use . They are obviously imperfect , and must leave his main merit , that which we have stated ; although his own object , in this work , be so much more comprehensive .
The work is distributed into five books , which treat , severally , of the English Character ; of Society and Manners ; Education , Morality , and Religion ; the Intellectual Spirit of the Time ; and our Political Condition . There are three appendices ; one on Popular Education , a second containing ' Remarks on Bentham ' s Philosophy , ' and the third ' A few Observations on Mr . Mill . '
The first book should have been the last ; or rather the subject of the first book should have been discussed last , and its matter have arisen as a set of inferences from the statements in the other portions of the work . At present it reads as a hasty and superficial Essay , its allegations supported by very partial and imperfect proofs , and leaving us to eke out > as we may , the obvious deficiency , by picking up , here and there as they occur , the remaining portions of similar evidence . There is not , indeed , throughout the
work any such defined and luminous outline of the English character , any such philosophical view of the process of its formation by the influence of institutions and other agencies , any such estimate of its worth and tendencies , as we had hoped to find . Perhaps these investigations would have been too profound for that sketchy manner which the author has seen fit to adopt . He may be right , if such was the alternative , in the choice which he has
made . He has the ear , or the eyes , of the circulating library readers ; his name on a title-page , if it do not continue to be a passport to the table of a drawing-room , is not , as yet , an exclusion ; and it was as well for him to retain that laudable horror of boredom' for which he was celebrated in the management of a periodical which we lament to see has lost the honour and
advantage of his superintendence . The light craft which he has rigged out may sail in waters too shallow for heavier vessels to make way in . Prosperous be her voyage , for there are solid goods in the freight , though the commodities look so gay and sparkling . In its tendency , though not so much in its tone , or opinions , this book
Untitled Article
586 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 586, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/2/
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