A Hundred Years Ago
Generally speaking, the periodical press betrays a remarkable ignorance of the state of society, and the changes which are taking place in habits, modes of life, and thought. One of the most original and ingenious authors of our, time, Mr. Resat, writes strictures on manners, obviously upon the supposition that they remain precisely what they were in the time of Queen Anne. This is indeed the halting-point to literary men.
There are in this country (if the solecism may be allowed us) two distinct worlds—the world of paper, and the world of fact ; bearing about the same relation to each other which the pound- note of a score of years ago bore to twenty shillings. The press, like Parliament in the parallel, votes them equivalent ; but were it to tender its paper at the bank of Truth, it would find it subject to immense discount, in consideration of its unsustained repre- sentation of value.
Through all society there runs a race of ostentation, and of pretension beyond substance, which is as demoralizing as it is generally ruinous to the parties. A thrifty few are ever on the watch for the consequent wreckages ; property changes hands, new fortunes are made, new parvenue shoot up, and new prodigals play off the reservoirs of wealth which parsimony has accumulated: From the trader in his gig, and his wife in her finery, to the duke in his castle, the same spirit of excess is observable - but the duke being at bottom the more prudent man, cures it by a timely, flight to the sea-side, while the trader too often finds his way to the Fleet. We know it is confessed by some of the wealthiest noblemen in the land, that they cannot afford the expenses of the style of living befitting their country-houses; and that they fly to Brighton, Cheltenham, Dover, &c., for economy, and save in dog-holes as twenty-guineas a week :-
" Translatus subito ad Marcos, mensamque Sabellam, Contentusque illic Veneto, duroque cucullo."
It is thus quite a mistake to attribute to the morgue aristocratique the visits of our magnates to the bathing-places : on the contrary, indeed, the aristocratical habits of exclusion are relaxed at those haunts of mixed company, and an understood suspension of the law of non-intercourse prevails,. .
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