CHAPTER V.

SUPPLEMENTARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHARACTER. ·

The Sir Harry Hargrave of one party-The Tom Whitehead of anotherWilliam Muscle, of the Old School of Radicals-Samuel Square, a Pseudophilosopher of the New-My Lord Mute, the Dandy Harmless-Sir Paul Snarl, the Dandy Venomous-Mr. Warm, the Respectable Man-Mr. Cavendish Fitzroy, a corollary from the theorem of Mr. Warm-The English Thief The Practical Man.

SIR HARRY HARGRAVE is an excellent gentleman; his conscience is scrupulous to the value of a pin's head; he is benevolent, hospitable, and generous. Sir Harry Hargrave is never dishonest nor inhumane, except for the best possible reasons. He has, for instance, a very worthless younger son; by dint of interest with the Bishop of, he got the scapegrace a most beautiful living; the new rector has twenty thousand souls to take care of; and Sir Harry well knows, that so long as pointers and billiard-tables are to be met with, young Hopeful will never bestow even a thought on his own. Sir Harry Hargrave, you say, is an excellent gentleman; yet he moves heaven and earth to get his son a most responsible situation, for which he knows the rogue to be wholly unfit. Exactly so; Sir Harry Hargrave applauds himself for it: he calls it-taking care of his family. Sir Harry Hargrave gives away one hundred and two loaves every winter to the poor; it is well to let the labourer have a loaf of bread now and then for nothing: would it not be as well, Sir Harry, to let him have the power always to have bread cheap? Bread cheap! what are you saying? Sir Harry thinks of the rents, and considers you a revolutionist for the question. But Sir Harry Hargrave, you answer, is a humane man, and charitable to the poor. Is this conscientious? My dear sir, to be sure; he considers it his first duty-to take care of the landed interest. Sir Harry Hargrave's butler has robbed him; and the

122

52

SIR HARRY HARGRAVE.-TOM WHITEHEAD.

good gentleman has not the heart to proceed against the rascal; he merely discharges him. What an excellent heart he must have! So he has; yet last year he committed fifteen poachers to jail. Strange inconsistency! Not at all-what becomes of the country gentleman if his game is not properly protected? Sir Harry Hargrave is a man of the strictest integrity; his word is his bond-he might say with one of the Fathers, "that he would not tell you a lie to gain heaven by it ;" yet Sir Harry Hargrave has six times in his life paid five thousand pounds to three hundred electors in Cornwall, whom he knew would all take the bribery oath, that they had not received a shilling from him. He would not tell a lie, you say; yet he makes three hundred men forswear themselves! Precisely so; and when you attempt to touch the system of perjury, he opposes you to his last gasp: but he is not to be blamed for this—he is only attached to the venerable constitution of his forefathers! Sir Harry Hargrave is an accomplished man, and an excellent scholar; yet he is one of the most ignorant persons you ever met with. His mind is full of the most obsolete errors; a very Monmouth-street of threadbare prejudices; if a truth gleam for a moment upon him, it discomposes all his habits of thought, like a stray sunbeam on a cave full of bats. He enjoys the highest possible character among his friends for wisdom and virtue: he is considered the most consistent of human beings: consistent !-yes, to his party.

Tom Whitehead is a very different person; he is clever, sharp, shrewd, and has lived a great deal at Paris. He laughs at antiquity: he has no poetry in his nature; he does not believe in virtue; with him "all men are liars." He has been a great gambler in his youth; he professes the most profligate notions about women; he has run through half his fortune; he is a liberal politician, and swears by Lord Grey. His father was a whig before him, and for the last twenty years he has talked about "the spirit of improvement." He is a favourite at the clubs; an honest fellow, because he laughs so openly at the honesty of other people. He is half an atheist, because he thinks it cant to be more than half a believer. But religion is a good thing for the people; whom while he talks of enlightenment, he thinks it the part of a statesman to blind to every thing beyond the Reform Bill. He is for advancement to a certain point-till his

party come in; he then becomes a conservative-lest his party go out. Having had the shrewdness to dismiss old prejudices from his mind, he has never taken the trouble to supply their place with new principles: he fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiences of other people; he is very ignorant, because he has never reflected on his own. He is a sort of patriot; but he is for "people of property;"-he has a great horror of the canaille. As Robert Hall said of Bishop Watson, "he married Public Virtue in his youth, and has quarrelled with his wife ever since." His party think him the most straightforward fellow in the world; for he never voted against them, and never will.

William Muscle is a powerful man; he is one of the people, radical to the back-bone: of the old school of radicals; he hates the philosophers like poison. He thinks Thistlewood a glorious fellow; and no words can express his hatred of William Pitt. He has got at last into parliament, which he always declared he could convince in a fortnight that he was the sole person in the Universe fit to govern England; whenever he speaks he says one word about England, to fifty about America. Presidents with five thousand a year are the visions that float for ever in his brain: he seeth not why the Speaker of the House of Commons should have more than a hundred a year; he knoweth many an honest man among his constituents who would be Speaker for less. He accuses the aristocracy of an absolute and understood combination to cheat the good citizens of his borough. He thinketh that Lord Grey and Sir Robert Peel meet in private, to consult how they may most tax the working-classes. He hateth the Jews because they don't plough. He has no desire that the poor man should be instructed. He considereth the cry against taxes on knowledge as sheer cant. He hath a mortal hatred to Museums, and asketh the utility of insects. His whole thought for the poor is how they shall get bread and bacon: he despiseth the man who preferreth tea to ale. He is thoroughly English; no other land could have produced the bones and gristle of his mind. He writeth a plain, strong style, and uttereth the most monstrous incredibilities, as if they were indisputable. He thinks fine words and good periods utter abomination. He esteemeth himself before all men. He believes that the ministers have consulted several times on

the necessity of poisoning him. He is indignant if others pretend to serve the People; they are his property. He is the Incarnation of popular prejudices and natural sense. He is changeable as a weathercock, because he is all passion. He is the living representation of the old John Bull; when he dies, he will leave no like it was the work of centuries to amalgamate so much talent, nonsense, strength, and foibles, into one man of five feet eight he is the Old Radical-the great Aboriginal of annual parliamentarilism: he is the landmark of Reform fifty years ago: you may whitewash and put new characters on him, but he sticketh still in the same place: he is not to be moved to suit the whims of the philosophers. He hath done his work: a machine excellent at its day-coarse, huge, massive and uncouth; not being easily put out of order, but never perfectly going right. People have invented new machines, all the better for being less rude, and regulated by a wiser principle, though wrought from a less strong material.

-a

Samuel Square is of a new school of Radicals; he also is a Republican. He is not a philosopher, but he philosophizes eternally. He liveth upon "first principles." He cannot move a step beyond them. He hath put the feet of his mind into boxes, in order that they may not grow larger, and thinks it a beauty that they are unfit for every-day walking. Whatever may be said by any man against his logic, he has but one answer first principle. He hath no suppleness in him. He cannot refute an error. He stateth a truism in reply, that hath no evident connexion with the matter in dispute. He thinketh men have no passions; he considereth them mere clock-work, and he taketh out his eternal first principle, as the only instrument to wind them up by. He is assured that all men of all classes, trades, and intellects act by self-interest, and if he telleth them that their interest is so-and-so, so-and-so will they necessarily act. In vain you show him that he never yet hath convinced any man; he replieth by a first principle, to prove, in spite of your senses, that he hath. He has satisfied himself, and demands no further proof. He is of no earthly utility, though he hath walled himself, with a supposed utilitarianism. He cannot write so as to be read, because he conceives that all agreeable writing is full of danger. He cannot speak so as to be understood, precisely because he never speaks but in syllogisms. He hath no pith and

succulence in him :—he is as dry as a bone. He liveth by system:-he never was in love in his life. He refuseth a cheerful glass; nay, perhaps he dieteth only upon vegetable food. He hath no human sympathies with you, but is a great philanthropist for the people to be born a thousand years hence. He never relieveth any one: he never caresseth any one: he never feeleth for any one-he only reasoneth with every one--and that on the very smallest inch he can find of mutual agreement. If he was ever married I should suspect him to be the father who, advertising the other day for a runaway daughter, begged her, "if she would not return to her disconsolate parents, to send them back the key of the tea-chest." What is most strange about him is, that while he thinks all the rest of the world exceedingly foolish, he yet believes they are only to be governed by reason. You will find him visiting a lunatic asylum, and assuring the madman that it is not rational to be insane. He knoweth not one man from another; they seem to him as sheep or babies seem to us-exactly alike. He thinketh that he ought to have a hand in public affairs-the Almighty forbid! This is a scion from the tree of the new radicals: he hath few brethren: he calleth himself a Philosopher, or sometimes a Benthamite. He resembleth the one or the other as the harber's block resembleth a man. -He is a block.

The spirit of coxcombry, as you find it on the Continent, would seem to be a perversion of the spirit of benevolence;— it is the desire to please, fantastically expressed. With us it is just the reverse, it seems a perversion of the spirit of malignity; -it is the desire to displease ;-there is, however, one species of coxcombry which I shall first describe; passive and harmless, it consists in no desire at all.

Lord Mute is an English élégant-a dandy. You know not what he has been. He seems as if he could never have been a boy; all appearance of nature has departed from him. He is six feet of inanity enveloped in cloth! You cannot believe God made him-Stultz must have been his Frankenstein. He dresseth beautifully-let us allow it-there is nothing outré about him: you see not in him the slovenly magnificence of other nations. His characteristic is neatness. His linen-how white! His shirt-buttons-how regularly set in! His colours--how. well chosen! His boots are the only things splendid in his