where else. Thus (the consequence is notable) we acquire that habit of attaching an undue importance to our own circle, and viewing with indifference all the sphere beyond, which proverbially distinguishes the recluse, or the member of a confined coterie. Your Excellency has perhaps conversed with Mr. Owen;-that benevolent man usually visits every foreigner whom he conceives worthy of conversion to parallelogrammatisation; and, since I remember the time when he considered the Duke of Wellington and the Archbishop of Canterbury among the likeliest of his proselytes, it is not out of the range of possibilities that he should imagine he may make an Owenite of the ExBishop of Autun. If, by any accident, Mr. Owen is wrong upon that point, he is certainly right in another; he is right when, in order to render philanthropy universal, he proposes that individuals of every community should live in public together-the unsocial life is scarcely prolific of the social virtues.

But if it be not the consciousness of liberty, what causes are they that produce amongst us that passion for the Unsocial, which we dignify with the milder epithet of the Domestic? I apprehend that the main causes are two: the first may be found in our habits of trade; the second, in the long-established influence of a very peculiar form of aristocracy.

With respect to the first, I think we may grant, without much difficulty, that it is evidently the nature of Commerce to detach the mind from the pursuit of amusement : fatigued with promiscuous intercourse during the day, its votaries concentrate their desires of relaxation within their home; at night they want rest rather than amusement : hence we usually find that a certain apathy to amusement, perfectly distinct from mere gravity of disposition, is the characteristic of commercial nations. It is not less observable among the Americans, and the Dutch, than it is among the English; the last indeed have, in their social state, great counterbalances to the commercial spirit. I had the honour of being introduced the other day to a young traveller from Amsterdam. "Have you been to the play since your arrival in London?" was a natural question.

"No, sir, those amusements are very expensive."

"True; but a man so enviably rich as yourself can afford them."

No, sir," was the austere and philosophic reply, "I can afford the amusement, but not the habit of amusement."

A witty countryman of your Excellency's told me that he could win over any Englishman I pleased to select, to accompany him to a mas-querade that was to be given at the Opera House. I selected for the experiment a remarkably quiet and decorous father of a family-a merrhant. The Frenchman accosted him-" Monsieur never goes to masquerades, I believe?"

"Never."

"So I thought. It would be impossible to induce you to go?" "Not quite impossible," said the merchant, smiling; "but I am too busy for such entertainments; besides, I have a moral scruple."

"Exactly so. I have just bet my friend here three to one that he could not persuade you to go to the masquerade given to-morrow night at the Opera House."

"Three to one!" said the merchant; "those are long odds."

"I will offer you the same bet," rejoined the Frenchman gaily, "in guineas, if you please."

"Three to one!-done," cried the Englishman, and he went to the Opera House in order to win his wager; the masquerade in this case had ceased to be an amusement-it had become a commercial speculation ! *

But the same class that are indifferent to amusement, are yet fond of show. A spirit of general unsociability is not incompatible with the love of festivals on great occasions, with splendid entertainments, and a luxurious hospitality. Ostentation and unsociability are often effects of the same cause; for the spirit of commerce, disdaining to indulge amusement, is proud of displaying wealth; and is even more favourable to the Luxuries, than it is to the Arts.

The second cause of our unsociability is more latent than the first : so far from springing out of our liberty, it arises from the restraints on it; and is the result, not of the haughtiness of a democracy, but the peculiar influences of aristocratic power. This part of my inquiry, which is very important, deserves a chapter to itself.

So, in the United States, a traveller tells us that he observed in the pit of the theatre, two lads of about fifteen years of age, conversing very intently between the acts. Curiosity prompted him to listen to the dialogue. Were they discussing the merits of the play-the genius of the actor-the splendour of the scene? No such thing; they were attempting to calculate the number of spectators, and the consequent profits of the manager.

CHAPTER II.

The effect of the openness of Public Honours to the Plebeian counteracted by the Patrician influences.-Mr. Hunt's bon mot.-Character of Lord Lachrymal.Mistake of the People in their jealousy of the Crown.-Causes that distinguish the influence of the English, from that of any other, Aristocracy.-The numerous Grades of Society.-How created.-Spirit of Imitation and vying.-The Reserve and Orgueil of the English traced to their causes.-The Aristocracy operate on Character. Character on Laws.-Want of Amusements among the Poor.

THE proverbial penetration of your Excellency has doubtless remarked, that England has long possessed this singular constitution of society-the spirit of democracy in the power of obtaining honours, and the genius of an aristocracy in the method by which they are acquired. The highest offices have been open by law to any man, no matter what his pedigree or his quarterings; but influences, stronger than laws, have determined that it is only through the aid of one portion or the other of the aristocracy that those offices can be obtained. Hence we see daily in high advancement men sprung from the people, who yet never use the power they have acquired in the people's behalf. Nay, it may be observed, even among the lawyers, who owe at least the first steps of promotion to their own talents or perseverance, though for the crowning honours they must look to oligarchical favour, that, as in the case of a Scott or a Sugden, the lowest plebeian by birth has only to be of importance to become the bitterest aristocrat in policy. The road to honours is apparently popular; but each person rising from the herd has endeavoured to restrain the very principle of popularity by which he has risen. So that, while the power of attaining eminent station has been open to all ranks, yet in proportion as that power bore any individual aloft, you might see it purifying itself of all democratic properties, and beautifully melting into that aristocratic atmosphere which it was permitted to attain.—Mr. Hunt, whom your Excellency may perhaps have heard of, as a Doctrinaire, in a school once familiar to yourself, had a peculiar faculty of uttering hard truths. "You speak," quoth he, one evening in the House of Commons, "of the mob of demagogues whom the Reform Bill will send to parliament; be not afraid, you have one sure method of curing the wildest of them; choose your man, catch him, place him on the Treasury bench, and be assured you will never hear him accused of being a demagogue again."

Lord Lachrymal (it is classical, and dramatic into the bargain, to

speak of the living under feigned names) is a man of plebeian extraction. He has risen through the various grades of the law, and has obtained possession of the highest. No man calls him parvenu-he has confounded himself with the haute noblesse; if you were to menace the peer's right of voting by proxy, he would burst into tears. "Good old man," cry the Lords, "how he loves the institutions of his country!" Am I asked why Lord Lachrymal is so much respected by peers-am I asked why they boast of his virtues, and think it wrong to remember his origin? I would answer that question by another, Why is the swallow considered by the vulgar a bird that should be sacred from injury? Because it builds under their own eaves! There is a certain class of politicians, and Lord Lachrymal is one of them, who build their fortunes in the roofs of the aristocracy, and obtain, by about an equal merit, an equal sanctity with the swallow.

In nearly all states, it is by being the tool of the great that the lowly rise. People point to the new Sejanus, and cry to their children, "See the effect of merit !"-Alas, it is the effect of servility. In despotic states, the plebeian has even a greater chance of rising than in free. In the East a common water-carrier to-day is grand vizier to-morrow. In the Roman Republic the low-born were less frequently exalted, than they were in the Roman Despotism. So with us it was the Tories who brought forward the man of low or mediocre birth; the Whigs, when they came in power, had only their grands seigneurs to put into office. The old maxim of the political adventurer was invariably this: To rise from the people, take every oportunity to abuse them! What mattered it, then, to the plebeians that one of their num→ ber was exalted to the Cabinet? He had risen by opposing their wishes; his very characteristic was that of contempt for his brethren. A nobleman's valet is always supereminently bitter against the canaille: a plebeian in high station is usually valet to the whole peerage!

The time has long passed when the English people had any occasion for jealousy against the power of the Crown. Even at the period in which they directed their angry suspicions against the King, it was not to that branch of the legislature that the growing power of corruption was justly to be attributed. From the date of the aristocratic revolution of 1688, the influence of the aristocracy has spread its unseen monopoly over the affairs of state. The king, we hear it said, has the privilege to choose his ministers! Excellent delusion! The aristocracy choose them. The heads of that aristocatic party which is the most powerful must come into office, whether the king like it or not. Could the king choose a cabinet out of men unknown to the aristocracy-persons belonging neither to whig nor tory? Assuredly not; the aristocratic party in the two Houses would be in arms. Heavens, what a commotion there would be! Imagine the haughty indigna

tion of my Lords Grey and Harrowby! What a "prelection" we should receive from Lord Brougham, "deeply meditating these things!" Alas! the king's ministry would be out the next day, and the aristocracy's ministry, with all due apology, replaced. The power of the king is but the ceremonial to the power of the magnates. He enjoys the prerogative of seeing two parties fight in the lists, andof crowning the victor. Need I cite examples of this truth? Lord Chatham is the dread and disgust of George III.-the stronger of the two factions for the time being forces his majesty into receiving that minister. The Catholic question was the most unpalatable measure that could be pressed upon George IV. To the irritability of that monarch no more is conceded than was granted to the obstinacy of his royal father, and the Catholic Relief Bill is passed amidst all the notoriety of his repugnance. In fact, your Excellency, who knows so well the juggling with which one party in politics fastens its sins upon another, may readily perceive that the monarch has only been roasting the chestnuts of the aristocracy; ' and the aristocracy, cunning creature, has lately affected to look quite shocked at the quantity of chestnuts roasted.

In a certain savage country that I have read of, there is a chief supposed to be descended from the gods; all the other chiefs pay him the greatest respect; they consult him if they should go to war, or proclaim peace; but it is an understood thing, that he is to be made acquainted with their determination beforehand. His consent is merely the ratification of their decree. But the chiefs, always speaking of his power, conceal their own; and while the popular jealousy is directed to the seeming authority, they are enabled quietly to cement and extend the foundations of the real. Of a similar nature have been the relations between the English king and the English aristocracy; the often odious policy of the last has been craftily fastened on the first; and the sanctity of a king has been too frequently but the conductor of popular lightning from the more responsible aristocracy. The supposed total of constitutional power has always consisted of three divisions; the king, the aristocracy, and the commons: but the aristocracy (until the passing of the Reform Bill), by boroughs in the one house, as by hereditary seats in the other, monopolized the whole

The nation had begun to perceive this truth, when Burke thought fit once more to blind it. "One of the principal topics," saith he, in his Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents, "which was then, and has been since much employed by that political school, is an effectual terror of the growth of an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the Crown and the balance of the constitution," &c. He goes on to argue, that the influence of the Crown is a danger more imminent than that of the peerage. Although in the same work that brilliant writer declares himself "no friend to the aristocracy," his whole love for liberty was that of an aristocrat. His mind was eminently feudal in its vast and stately mould, and the patrician plausibilities dazzled and attracted him far more than the monarchical. He could have been a rebel more easily than a republican.