On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
against wrong in every corner of the globe ; they make to themselves common cause with spoliated Poland—with Ireland , dragooned into silence—with the human victims of Indostan ; wherever there is suffering , their experience unites them to it ; and their efforts , unavailing for themselves , often contribute to adjust the balance of the world . As ( in the touching Arabian proverb ) the barber learns his art on the orphan ' s face , so legislation sometimes acquires its wisdom by experiments on distress . '—vol . i . p . 205—207 .
The negation of genius and generosity , which are the true nobility of head and of heart , is often supposed to be compensated by the presence of a quality which is worshipped under the name of common sense . But there are blanks in creation . The absence of beauty in a woman by no means implies wit . Nor is simple dulness , or gross selfishness disproved by the most devout and reasonable thankfulness to heaven that the individual is neither Homer nor Don Quixote . Common sense is often assumed on grounds which show its non-existence . There is no common sense in preferring a lower degree of intellect to a higher , a roughly cast set of bodily organs to one which is refined and polished , or a heart that will scarcely move at the stroke of a sledge hammer to one which vibrates promptly and strongly . Those who have not genius would most show their common sense by reverencing it in others . The most accomplished and perfect logician we ever knew , has the best appreciation of the beautiful and the poetical . But what cares aristocracy for genius ? Mr . Bulwer defends Lord Byron for setting a coronet over his bed , on the ground of its mitigating the feelings which his authorship was calculated to excite .
4 A literary man with us is often forced to be proud of something else than talent—proud of fortune , of connexion , or of birth—in order not to be looked down upon . ' —vol . i . p . 164 .
And hereupon the author , who knows what he is about , brings his own ' old family * into a note . What a cold and preposterous thing is this pride of pedigree without that chivalrous spirit which , perhaps fictitiously ascribed , is the chief adornment of a
middleage ancestry . How this is cherished by the * knights and barons bold' of the ex-boroughmongering order , may be seen in our author ' s chapter on the army . They have obliterated from the ranks that honour , which is the French or Prussian soldier ' s principle , to govern by the halberds .
It is to the aristocratical spirit which pervades the organization of our army , a spirit which commands order by suppressing' the faculties , not by inciting the ambition ; and which has substituted for a proper system of recruiting and of military schools , the barbarous but effective
terror of the scourge ;—observe , 1 say , that it is to that spirit we owe the low moral standard of our army , find the consequent difficulty of abolishing corporal punishment . To one good end , our aristocracy
Untitled Article
Characteristics of English Aristocracy . 59 £
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 593, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/9/
-