Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

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Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would
it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then
about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we
are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies _now_ evangelical, to
conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to
gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their
own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of
their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing
them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young
ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses
that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their
"affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing
disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan
Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family.
The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers,
steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds
in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters,
their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their
lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he
thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of
immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of
the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials,
its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is
gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat
string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old
couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is
hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less
to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips--the two first being yet as
"wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing,
as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly
old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their
affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the
near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose
assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of
death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down
stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring.
The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife,
unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual
absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings,
somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven,
they don't care who goes to ----," a place that Virgil and Tasso have
taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently
indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.

Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no
prejudices--hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice,
but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce
enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for
drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris;
but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet,
swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.

He takes in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ because his father did it before
him--but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is
ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any
body who calls it _tic-douloureux._

When you go to dine with him, you are met at the door by a rosy-checked
lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles a hearty welcome, and assures
you, though an utter stranger, of the character of the house and its
owner. You are conducted to the drawing-room, a plain, substantial,
_honest_-looking apartment; there you find the old couple, and are
received with a warmth that gives assurance of the nearest approach to
what is understood by _home_. The sons, released from business, arrive,
shake you heartily by the hand, and are really glad to see you; of the
daughters we say nothing, as there is nothing in _them_.

The other guests of the day come dropping in--all straightforward,
business-like, free, frank-hearted fellows--aristocrats of wealth, the
best, because the _unpretending_, of their class; they come, too,
_before_ their time, for they know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
keeps nobody waiting for nobody. When the clock--for here is no
_gong_--strikes five, you descend to dinner; plain, plentiful, good, and
well dressed; no tedious course, with long intervals between; no
oppressive _set-out_ of superfluous plate, and what, perhaps, is not the
least agreeable accessory, no piebald footmen hanging over your chair,
whisking away your plate before you have done with it, and watching
every bit you put into your mouth.

Your cherry-cheeked friend and another, both in the family from
childhood, (another good sign of the house,) and looking as if they
really were glad--and so they are--to have an opportunity of obliging
you, do the servitorial offices of the table; you are sure of a glass of
old sherry, and you may call for strong beer, or old port, with your
cheese--or, if a Scotchman, for a dram--without any other remark than an
invitation to "try it again, and make yourself comfortable."

After dinner, you are invited, as a young man, to smoke a cigar with the
"boys," as Joe persists in calling them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
are requested to keep your head out o' window while smoking, lest the
"Governor" should snuff the fumes when he comes up stairs to bed: while
you are "craning" your neck, the cherry-cheeked lass enters with brandy
and water, and you are as merry and easy as possible. The rest of the
evening passes away in the same unrestrained interchange of friendly
courtesy; nor are you permitted to take your leave without a promise to
dine on the next Sunday or holiday--Mrs Stimpson rating you for not
coming last Easter Sunday, and declaring she cannot think "why young men
should mope by themselves, when she is always happy to see them."

Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true _ring_ of the
ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding _raps_: they
know they have what I want, _a home_, and they will not allow me, at
their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely,
isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and
unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they
can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for
their kindness; but I owe them for many a social day redeemed from
cheerless solitude; many an hour of strenuous labour do I owe to the
relaxation of the old wainscotted dining-room at Bermondsey.

Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all who are satisfied with their station,
happy in their home, have no repinings after empty sounds of rank and
shows of life; and who extend the hand of friendly fellowship to the
homeless, _because they have no home_!


THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.

"There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to
the level of the great occasions that call it forth."

This illustration, borrowed by Sir James Mackintosh from chemical
science, and so happily applied, may serve to indicate the undoubted
truth, that talent is a _growth_ as much as a _gift_; that circumstances
call out and develop its latent powers; that as soil, flung upon the
surface from the uttermost penetrable depths of earth, will be found to
contain long-dormant germs of vegetable life, so the mind of man, acted
upon by circumstances, will ever be found equal to a certain sum of
production--the amount of which will be chiefly determined by the force
and direction of the external influence which first set it in motion.

The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more,
that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing
in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various
countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that
example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing
after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes
of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great
instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted
men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they
do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when
ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live
rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only
the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be
shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away
immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his
trade; and _he_ will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.

It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to _take_
opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as
the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be
great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise.
All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low
Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon,
a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but
which we take leave to designate the "_dot-and-carry-one_" century. If a
Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five
seconds would elapse until he would be "_hooked_" off to the
station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an
exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or
Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were
to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against
Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division,
with a _posse_ of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator
from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice
of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
point of view with any other vagabond.

What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery
orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at
Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason,
that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer,
you will hear no such thing as a speech--behold no such animal as an
orator--only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an
attorney-general, or a sergeant, or a leading counsel, quietly talking
over a matter of law with the judge, or a matter of fact with the jury,
like men of business as they are, and shunning, as they would a
rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments, figures, flowers, and the obsolete
embroidery of rhetoric?

The days of romantic eloquence are fled--the great constitutional
questions that called forth "thoughts that breathe, and words that
burn," from men like Erskine, are _determined_. Would you have men
oratorical over a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about an action of trespass
on the case, or a rule to compute?

To be sure, when Follett practised before committees of the House of
Commons, and, by chance, any question involving points of interest and
difficulty in Parliamentary law and practice came before the Court,
there was something worth hearing: the _opportunity_ drew out the _man_,
and the _orator_ stepped before the _advocate_. Even now, sometimes, it
is quite refreshing to get a topic in these Courts worthy of Austin, and
Austin working at it. But no man need go to look for orators in our
ordinary courts of law; judgment, patience, reading, and that rare
compound of qualities known and appreciated by the name of _tact_, tell
with judges, and influence juries; the days of _palaver_ are gone, and
the talking heroes extinguished for ever.

All this is well known in London; but the three or four millions (it may
be _five_) of great men, philosophers, poets, orators, patriots, and the
like, in the rural districts, require to be informed of this our
declension from the heroics, in order to appreciate, or at least to
understand, the modesty, sobriety, business-like character, and division
of labour, in the vast amount of talent abounding in every department of
life in London.

London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of
illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours
turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and
rottenness; straining through the various _strata_, its grosser
particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure,
transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London
life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, _pseudo_-talent,
_soi-disant_ intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True
genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way
through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in
acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town.

There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high
and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London:

"Emulation hath a thousand sons,"

who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time
to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but
step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied--you are
edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle
slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to
be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses
you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you
_live_ but while you _labour_, and are no longer remembered than while
you are reluctant to repose.

Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated
upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise
and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although _knowledge_
diffused immortalizes itself, diffused _talent_ is but a shallow pool,
glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; _concentrated_, it
is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters.
Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of
labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in
a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his
opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his
profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber
counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary,
physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree,
unites in his own person, these--in London, distinct and
separate--professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or
extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor,
sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these
heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious,
appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is
the result of minutely divided labour.

The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least
twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the
raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall
be nay, _must_ be, the best of their class, or at least the best that
can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are
held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment
enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same
with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be
placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to
understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and
published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive
attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the
latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that
branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with
every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both,
that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute
division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the
market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs
of a legitimate superiority.

Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and
low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that
never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that
so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the
improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow;
hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less
extended spheres of action.

Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
genius, skill, _tact_, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by
no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better
classes, stand prominently before their fellows _socially_, or, that one
is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the
World of London.

In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth,
resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a
tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a
predominating _set_, the pride of those who are _in_, the envy of those
who are _below_ it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every
man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set,
social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent;
but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre
upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of
because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.

Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society
following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man
knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, _what_ he is worth.

A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is _there_ a man good for _so_
much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten
thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the
aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you
are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a
bill."

Go abroad, to Rome for example--You are smothered beneath the petticoats
of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of
Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in
military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every
turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
Make your way into Germany--What do you find there? an aristocracy of
functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von,
Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von,
crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess--for the women there
must be _better_-half even in their titles--you find society led, or, to
speak more correctly, society _consisting_ of functionaries, and they,
every office son of them, and their wives--nay, their very curs--alike
insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at
_me_!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you
must contrive to be the _servant_ of the public before you are permitted
to be the _master_: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition
to despise, the _canaille_.

Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English
people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent
exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies,
conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial
and a Parisian aristocracy--the former a servile mob of placemen, one in
fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter--oh! my poor
head, what a _clanjaffrey_ of _journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes_,
dramatists, novelists, _vaudivellistes_, poets, literary ladies, lovers
of literary ladies, _hommes de lettres, claqueurs, litterateurs,
gerants, censeurs, rapporteurs_, and _le diable boiteux_ verily knows
what else!

These people, with whom, or at least with a great majority of whom,
common sense, sobriety of thought, consistency of purpose, steady
determination in action, and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed by
their vivacity, _empressement_, prejudice, and party zeal, form a
prominent, indeed, _the_ prominent aristocracy of the _salons_: and only
conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that
Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this
foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse,
enjoying station without property; abounding in maddening and exciting
influences, but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
_ungenius-like_ qualities of patience, prudence, charity, forbearance,
and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn nation, more than any other
in Europe, stands in need.

When, in the name of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be
gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are
paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent
thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give
over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "_gloire_" and
"_victoire_," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures
endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if
it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of
human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their
fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with
every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to
bleed nations with their pen!

Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and
restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till
they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine.

To resume: the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of
literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns
have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has
an ecclesiastical--Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an
aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great
aristocracies--the military, place-hunting, and foolscap.

Now, then, attend to what we are going to say: London is cursed with no
predominating, no overwhelming, no _characteristic_ aristocracy. There
is no _set_ or _clique_ of any sort or description of men that you can
point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be
informed what set do you mean: every _salon_ has its set, and every
pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither
envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own:
the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high
life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper
self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the
World of London.

We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all
magnitudes, and myriads of _nebulae_ of no magnitudes at all: we move
harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied
with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we
bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all
terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks,
are our meteors, our _aurorae_, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our
tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our
clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and
we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday
of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as
it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies
his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial
bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_
such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.

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