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Untitled Article
reading a newspaper or the Penny Magazine , is not so happy as the boor who drinks beer in a bowling-green , or dances to a crazed fiddle in a beer-shop ; that the mechanic excited by the debates in Parliament , is a miserable being compared with
the wrestler or the cudgel player . But the former is surely a superior creature compared with the latter ; he better fulfils the purposes of existence , and , if he be more sensible of pain , his p leasures are multiplied an hundred fold , not onl y in number but in degree .
But there is another feature of the times , less pleasing though no less striking , admitted indeed and deplored by the most talented publication of the party supported by and supporting abuses : I mean , the exclusiveness of the aristocracy ' , so admirably deprecated in a recent number of Blackwood ' s Magazine . But the evil consequences of this are seen rather in the indirect effect of example than in any direct influence which it has upon society ; for the aristocracy , properly so
called , are not sufficiently numerous , and are too much retired from the multitudes that make up the world to excite in them any sense of humiliation or contempt . Blackwood has attributed this characteristic of the highest classes to an overweening pride . But I am inclined to believe that it has arisen from a less despicable cause . I should rather suppose it to be the consequence of extended wealth and knowledge . Formerly the aristocracy engrossed both . They then needed no artificial distinctions ; but of late , education , and commerce
have made it very difficult to know a peer from a merchant . Hence the growing exclusiveness of the highest classes ; hence the origin of the freemasonry by which they endeavour to keep their order uncontaminated by the presence of the base born They think that the coarse pottery of human clay , however gilded , is not fit to associate with the porcelain of which they are framed . Their conduct , as I have said , would be of little
consequence , but that the example is fatally followed by every other rank of society , even by the lowest . We are divided and subdivided into an infinite number of sets and circles , one soaring above another in a multitude of gyrations , according to a capricious estimate of things unworthy of esteem . It is every body ' s object , the great duty of existence , to advance from his
own circle to that above him . Thus we live in the future , not in the present . No friendships are contracted , because all hope to move in time to another sphere , and it is felt that the most certain bar to admission into the circle above , is an intimacy with one moving in the circle below ; and as all are candidates for promotion , all agree in keeping aloof from all
the . rest . But is the middle * class more calm , more contented ' ? No . Well has the able author of England and America termed it
Untitled Article
The Signs of the Time * fift'i
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 221, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/29/
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