On Gentility, Nonsense — Illustrations of Gentility

What is gentility? People in different stations in England entertain different ideas of what is genteel, 193 but it must be something gorgeous, glittering, or tawdry to be considered genteel by any of them. The beau-ideal of the English aristocracy, of course with some exceptions, is some young fellow with an imperial title, a military personage, of course, for what is military is so particularly genteel, with flaming epaulets, a cocked hat and a plume, a prancing charger, and a band of fellows called generals and colonels, with flaming epaulets, cocked hats, and plumes, and prancing chargers vapouring behind him. It was but lately that the daughter of an English marquis was heard to say that the sole remaining wish of her heart — she had known misfortunes, and was not far from fifty — was to be introduced to — whom? The Emperor of Austria! The sole remaining wish of the heart of one who ought to have been thinking of the grave and judgment was to be introduced to the miscreant who had caused the blood of noble Hungarian females to be whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime than devotion to their country and its tall and heroic sons. The middle classes — of course there are some exceptions — admire the aristocracy, and consider them pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the Emperor of Russia till he became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age, ugliness, and misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor — look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. 194 This person makes his grand debut in the year ‘39, at a public meeting in the principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood with the character of a man worth a million pounds who is to make everybody’s fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own, though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain individuals who are his confederates. But in the year ‘49 he is really in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended he was worth ten years before — he is worth a million pounds. By what means has he come by them? By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to be paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their organization, have introduced crimes and language into England to which it was previously almost a stranger — by purchasing, with paper, shares by hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are of his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs, inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interes............