A WORD FROM A NEW DICTIONARY-" FLUNKEYISM." clever people who analyse everything from conscience down to cocoa, and find humiliating revelations in both, are very hard upon their duller brethren, who swallow a good many things as they come. They have a set of terms, half compassionate and half contemptuous, by which they designate the vast majority of the uninitiated; just as the Chinese (who do know a good many things) express their own superiority over Europeans by calling them "outer barbarians." "The British public," "the ordinary observer," "country gentlemen," "the majority of our readers"-all innocent-looking expressions enough, as they stand here-take to themselves, as used by certain speakers and writers, a peculiar non-parliamentary sense, which conveys a sort of quiet insult. It is remarkable how many very foolish things the "British public" is supposed to believe, and how many patent facts the "majority of our readers" is supposed not to know. And the unfortunate "ordinary observer," who has been brought up in the belief that black is black, is handled in the savagest manner by the scientific theorist who has made the discovery that black is white, and has vials of contempt poured out upon him as the most despicable of all created intelligences excepting only the rival teacher who has made the counter - discovery that black is blue. WHAT with rationalists who try to explain away our old beliefs, and materialists who sneer at them, and spiritualists who offer to supply us with the most startling new ones in their stead, and laughing cynics who excoriate our social system, and show us that "all is vanity" except shilling serials-the ordinary public of stupid easy-going people has rather a hard time of it in this nineteenth century. It is well known, however much to be la mented, that the world does not altogether consist of philosophers of any school. The popular eye sees a very little way into the millstone. There is a heavy majority which acts much in the same way as the disproportionate bread does to the ham in a railway sandwich; holding this thin layer of pungent genius cribbed and confined in its grasp, concealing much of it from public observation, and neutralising to a great extent the salt and the smoke-essence (if the comparison is uncomplimentary, it is the metaphor's fault, not mine) whose racy combination might otherwise be too strong for weak digestions. In the case of the aforementioned sandwich, the travelling public seems to be agreed that the proportion of bread-dry and tasteless though it be is a merciful dispensation of the purveyor's providence; that the internal and more precious stratum, whose flavour and quality, though potent, is not always readily comprehensible, is none the worse Happily, this lower order of befor being modified by the simpler ings these "ordinary observers," element which surrounds it. So "British public," or what you will also in the great human sandwich of which society is made up, it is probably quite as well that there should be an immense proportion of innocent and insipid material in the composition. This predominating and common element is, of course, held rather cheap by the more piquant article with which it is associated. The are a hardy and much-enduring race. Nature has been said by very high authority (probably Paley) to have provided for those animals who are the natural prey of cleverer and fiercer enemies a special organisation; they have immense vitality, strange powers of reproduction, and thick skins or thick heads as the case may require. When so many boys are so very "fond of animals -that is, fond of throwing stones at them," like Tom Tulliver, and while field-sports continue the delight of English gentlemen, it is clear that unless cats had nine lives, and a fox rather enjoyed being hunted (for both which facts we are indebted to a scientific friend), those persecuted races must have died out under their miseries long ago. The slow coaches of nature beat the fast ones occasionally. The present deponent (an "ordinary observer") was once acquainted with a pet eagle who spent the greater part of his day in sitting on the back of a tortoise, his companion in confinement, and making vain attempts to eat him; but a tortoise (as may be known even to the "majority of readers"), if he have only the sense to keep his head inside his shell, takes a great deal of eating; and though said deponent cannot now trace the relative fate of the two parties in question, he thinks it most probable (remembering that the old Peterborough tortoise outlived seven bishops of that see, and must have seen with calm indifference the rise and fall of more than one system of theology) that the hard-shelled old gentleman just mentioned lived to see his enemy stuffed and shelved, after all. So you and I, my reader, may live yet to see a dozen vagaries of science exploded, and a good many clever and popular theories, with which people now torment and perplex us, safely shelved. that once fashionable romantic school of sentiment which saw gloom and hollowness in all things, love and friendship included; which was sick of the world at twentyfive, and could only relish its wine out of a skull. That was a false view of life, on the whole, we now admit; young England at present does not much affect sentimental misanthropy; it chews a short pipe instead of "the cud of bitter fancies," and drinks its beer out of a pewter like a bargee. It is easy enough to explode the affectations of a past generation. Modern cynicism, which affects also that discerning of spirits which sees through the hollowness of society, takes a different view of social life; it finds it not a thing to frown and stamp at, but rather to smile at with a sort of superior pity, or shrewd contempt. The hidden wisdom of the present generation seems to lie in undermining-in all questions, from the highest to the most trivial established creeds and canons; teaching us that there is an esoteric view of human life which lies fully open only to the initiated, but of which they are willing to reveal to us such glimpses as we can bear; not enough to give us much definite idea of what ought to be, but enough to make us comfortably dissatisfied and suspicious about what is. We all laugh, in these days, at It has invented a great number of highly philosophical terms, which form the vocabulary of this new science. There is one set especially which serve to express the relationship supposed to exist between the higher and lower grades of English society. Flunkeyism - plush beadledom-lordolatry- Mumbojumbo - phantasms- these are a small selection out of many phrases which express, we are told, the characteristic elements of English social life in this nineteenth century. The words are not pretty ones, whether you look at them as a philologist or as a civil-spoken English gentleman. It is the sort of language which, if suddenly applied to you in the street by a stranger, your instinctive natural delicacy would prompt you to answer with your fist; you would resent it as decidedly insulting, though not wholly intelligible-like the poor fishwoman when she was called "a parallelogram." The words are indeed very ugly words; but by dint of incessant loud repetition they have carried a certain weight with them. Poor human nature has had these unpleasant vocables thrown in her teeth so often, that she has in a tacit way accepted them, or at least has seldom found courage to protest against such a voluble battery of abuse. It is like the case of the unfortunate gentleman, upon whom, when in perfect health, his friends practised the cruel jest of exclaiming, as they met him one by one in the street" Good heavens, how ill you are looking!" and who went home, took to his bed, and died-in deference to his friends' opinion. No man or woman likes to be called a " flunkey," or a "beadle "-parochial or extra-parochial; but, like delicate reputations under a loud slander, they often submit in shrinking silence rather than moot the question. "Am I a flunkey do I look, speak, act, think like a flunkey? why does this man and that man assume that I am a flunkey?" Such must be the sort of catechetical lecture which many an alarmed "ordinary reader" inflicts upon himself, fresh from the enjoyment (?) of the last paper of a clever essayist, or the last chapter of a satirical novel. For even professional flunkeys and valets, be it remembered, are not proud of the title; they prefer to call themselves, and to be called by others, somebody's "man"-or even somebody's gentleman.' No wonder that, as an amateur profession, we are all shy of confessing to it. 66 Let us examine a little this term flunkeyism," so largely and recklessly used of late. It was from Mr Carlyle's mint, or at least a child of his adoption. But the word and the idea have passed into other hands, and have been adopted by writers who address a larger circle; for Mr Carlyle, however piquant, is hardly reading for the million. A very able and popular writer-who can do better things-gave to the world some time ago a series which he entitled the Snob Papers. Their apparent aim was to show up the universal tendency in English society to toady the great, to worship rank, and especially to "ignore Arts and Letters." These papers described scenes in various grades of English society, which, if there was the faintest shadow of liferesemblance in them, only showed into what peculiar circles the author enjoyed an exclusive ticket of admission. They appeared originally in the pages of Punch; and would not be worth referring to at all, if they had not been republished, and thereby received, to a certain extent, an imprimatur from the author's maturer judgment. Some of them the sketches of "political snobs" were withdrawn; the writer shall give his own reason— "because they were so stupid,-so snobbish, in a word." It would have been wiser, and more worthy of his well-won position in the ranks of literature, if this selfsacrifice had been extended to the whole. But unfortunately there was a temptation to retain them; their key-note was one which the writers of this school think can never be sounded too wide or too loudly, and which is always sure to call down popular applause-of some sort. "Rank and precedence, forsooth!the table of ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung into the fire. Organise rank and precedence! that was well for the masters of ceremonies of former ages. Come forward some great marshal, and organise Equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks. If this is not gospel-truth-if the world does not tend to this-if hereditary great-man worship is not a humbug and an idolatry let us have the Stuarts back again, and crop the Free Press's ears in the pillory." Now such a piece of mouthing as this might be all very well for Punch. Even that amusing periodical cannot always find the supply of wit or novelty equal to the weekly demand, and probably finds its interest, in a pecuniary point of view, in giving a "column for the pot-house occasionally. There appeared, in one of its late numbers, a woodcut (apropos to nothing), representing a huge mushroom with a coronet on the top; round which several stout gentlemen in white waistcoats (happy emblems of a British public) were bowing in adoration; intended, no doubt, to teach a certain class of readers, to whom pictures are more intelligible than small pica, the same great moral lesson. It is easy to imagine such a paragraph as the above covered with honourable scars from black and beery fingers, and quoted as a burst of genuine eloquence"That's your sort for touching up the haristocracy!" But really, for an English gentleman to include it deliberately in a collected edition of his works, is a humiliating fact in the literary history of the day. "Gospel - truth," forsooth! one shrinks from dealing with such questions here; but if one were to answer such declaimers in their own spirit, "according to their folly"if one were not willing always to remember that the author of these papers has written in a Christian spirit elsewhere one would be justified in asking whether they had ever really studied this "Gospel" which is so often in their mouths. Rank and Precedence, indeed, are not "Gospel" words, any more than Liberty and Equality and a Free Press; but the One Authority, to whom we all sometimes so rashly appeal, as surely recognises the "" upper rooms of society, and honour amongst them that sit at meat," '-as decidedly admits what we call position as a legitimate object in social life, provided it be sought without obtrusiveness,-in short, sanctions all kinds and degrees of inequality in men's earthly relationships as distinctly as it proclaims their equality in the "larger and other eyes" of Heaven. The peculiarity about this charge of flunkeyism is that it is launched indiscriminately at the heads of all her Majesty's subjects; and the presumption is that Majesty itself is only exempted by the hardship of its position; that it would be delighted to take a part in the general bowing and scraping, if it could find somebody to receive the homage; and that it is almost tempted to make the voyage to China for the sake of the opportunity to perform the kotoo. "It is impossible," we are told, "for any Briton, perhaps, not to be a snob in some degree." The British public, it is true, takes all this in the quietest way possible; perhaps it believes it; perhaps it doesn't care about it; perhaps such is its snobbish nature that it "likes to be despised." Still, it is worth while to ask, what is the meaning of it all? what are the grounds for this sweeping assertion, that "all English society is cursed by this superstition" that we are all " sneaking and bowing and cringing on the one hand, or bullying and scorning on the other, from the highest to the lowest?" A very unpleasant "gospel" this; not to be embraced hastily, though it be proclaimed ever so loudly in the marketplace. A man is not a flunkey because two or three clever gentlemen call him so. I suspect that under this term of reproach is comprehended a good deal of what used to be called respect for one's betters-recognition of the legitimate claims of rank and station; in short, to go back to an oldfashioned formula, still taught in some benighted districts as a rule of life to children,-" behaving one's self lowly and reverently to all one's betters." But the school of which I am speaking does not confess to any betters; and as to reverence, if there is to be any such feeling, it is rather the worsers of society who are to be reverenced; their companionship is to be cultivated, their natural weaknesses condoned, their prejudices respected. What is vice in May-Fair becomes a kind of unlicensed virtue in St Giles's. There is an old chivalrous sentiment known to us and to our forefathers by the name of loyalty. It can hardly be denied that it has given birth to some of the most gallant deeds in history. It has been hitherto the pride and honest boast of every Englishman. But now, in some quarters, if confessed at all, it is under apologies and dis guises. We are continually invited to respect and admire the highest Lady in the land on grounds which are carefully limited to personal and private character; because she has set an admirable example as daughter, wife, and mother; because the moral atmosphere of her Court is pure; because she rises early, walks about, and goes to church like other excellent women; all which facts are happily true, and are national blessings, for which we may very well be thankful. But there seems to be a tacit implication, that if she were less than all this, the claim on the nation's respect would be reduced to an almost nominal term; "quamdiu se bene gesserit," is the tenure by which modern loyalty limits its devotion. Surely there is a principle, besides and beyond this, upon which men are bound to "honour the Queen;" if to attach the allegiance to the personal character, and not to the office, be one of the precepts of this new "gospel," assuredly it is the very contradiction of the old. Modern loyalty is content, however, for the present-always with these apologies and reservations to recognise the Throne. A man is not to be included in the charge of Flunkeyism because he takes off his hat to the Queen. I am by no means so confident as to the Prince Consort. I feel it would require a certain amount of moral courage -which I trust would be forthcoming for me to pay him that mark of ordinary civility in Hyde Park, if I felt that the awful eyes of Punch or the Snob" were upon me. But as for allowing this modicum of respect to descend an inch lower in the social scale-as for feeling or showing any kind of deference to a man because he happens to be a Duke, or a Knight of the Garter, or a Prime Minister,-that sort of thing, we all now understand (if we don't, it is from no neglect on the part of our teachers) is "plush," "flunkeyism," and all those other pretty names we find in this new philosophical dictionary. It is still allowable, I conclude, for a clergyman (at all events for a curate) to perform a mild kotoo to his bishop, and a middy may still be expected to touch his cap to the captain on the quarterdeck; but both these classes can only be considered as sucking Britons, not yet admitted to their full national privileges. It is wonderful indeed that if such plain-speaking "gospel-truths" are truths at all, so many of us should still refuse to see the error of their ways. Human nature in England must be, as Mrs Stowe's niggers say, "drefful wicked." How otherwise could people still be found so lost to all sense of propriety as to go to Court at all, still less to desire stars and garters, and suchlike tinsel? It is astonishing that when her Majesty holds a Chapter of the most noble Order of the Bath, or Thistle, or whatever it may be, that natural good-sense and propriety, which we are taught entitles that Royal Lady to our allegiance, does not lead her, instead of giving the accolade to the noble knight-expectant, to box his ears, and bid him begone for a goose. The " yeomen of the guard on duty" cannot be real English yeomen, or they would certainly drive York or Lancaster herald, whichever it might be, wearing his "collar and chain and badge" (as though he were the very genius of flunkeyism), out of the royal presence in disgust. How any duke, since the eyes of the public were thus at last opened, can get any one to dine with him-except another duke-and where those people who still persist in dining with dukes (when they are asked) expect to go to, are questions which lead us into the very depths of social depravity. The only comfortable refuge from such preaching lies in blank infidelity; a distinct denial of the doctrine that Rank and Precedence are not good things-legitimate objects of ambition for ourselves, and of respect in the person of others; and of the assertion that a mean cringing to them is the characteristic of the mass of English society. One |