Miscellaneous Back Matter [pp. 472A-RD06]

GENTILITY.
have become barbers, and they who, when on a throne, were
the glass the world dressed by, were esteemed in exile but
polite maitres de danise. Their power was fictitious, and in poverty they practised the profession they learned in youth. Their
real strength was in their knowledge of dancing and etiquette,
or the use of the razor and details of dress.
Wealth is the common power. Art, beauty, poetry, wit,
science, literature, gallantry, follow it and do its biddings.
Civilization itself is but the aristocrazation of the race, and
however much satire may refine on gentility, and draw fine
ideals, it will be found, after all, that fame, aristocracy, wealth
or genius, are but synonyms of power. However amiable the
delusions of fine sentiment or the good wishes of the Christian
may shape their notions of the character, still the majority,
lead by fashion, will insist on their own definition; and power,
disguised in the dress of the conventional gentlemen, will
always carry the day.
We are all as great aristocrats as we are capable of beinghowever much we may attempt to conceal it-down to the lowest classes in society. Wealth is the ordinary power in America. It is always so of commercial and agricultural countries.
It is the power of the State.
It is good food, rich dress, opportunity for refined association, means to live in dignity, and a perfect sense of equality,
that make the sons of rich people genteel. The best cuts of
mutton have a great deal to do in making beauty. These are
the magna of culinary departments, and on this the children
of the wealthy feed. Besides, their limbs are rounded in
strength and symmetry by gymnastic practice, without producing that stiffness of joint and coarseness and hardness of
feature produced by excessive labor. They have every chance
for the eultivation of the mind, from books or from intimate
association with distinguished persons. They have constantly
before them the models of elegant forms in the refined and
beautiful women who are their companions, the flowing grace
of whose statuesque positions teach the art of imitating art,
and the dancing-master puts the last touch of elegance to their
motions. Old portraits, galleries of pictures and sculpture, and
paintings of old masters, exquisitely appointed drawing-rooms,
libraries, the drama, the concert, and the sublime strains of the
operas, unconsciously educate their tastes. They mingle on easy
terms of intimacy with the distinguished, and soon acquire
those quiet and natural manners which nothing but habitual
familiarity with the customs of society and a feeling of power
and position will give. A king who loses his crownl loses with
it the proud self-confidence that markles his condescension graceful, and his courtesy degenerates into a sort of temporising servility. The power of a millionaire alone, by giving a sense of
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