seems collected and placed to view on purpose to be slighted and despised. But I contend, that other things being equal, this must have a worse effect on benevolence and respect for man, than where a much smaller number of the race is constantly seen and disregarded. And again; in a great city this principle of exclusion not only operates against so vast a number as to be equivalent to a contempt and rejection of the collective human race, but it operates with a more positive repellency than in a different place. In a situation where the inhabitants are at moderate distances from one another, the multitude to whom it is inevitable for my heart to be comparatively indifferent being not obvious to me, being, perhaps, divided from me by brooks, or fields, or woods, the principle of exclusion is of a very quiescent nature. It does not need nor imply an anti-social precaution of the heart, not to extend my kind regard to objects that rarely come within my notice. In a populous city, on the contrary, as beings of my own great family press round me on all sides, and seem to reproach by their constant recurrence the selfish insulation and unconcern with which I am invested, it seems to require a harder array of heart, a more positive reaction, approaching to aversion, to preserve the indifference inviolate in this close and living vicinity. Either it requires this reaction to exclude the number of human beings that we meet, from the sympathy which we naturally feel for our kind, or in a great city the heart is delivered from the tendencies of this sympathy by its unavoidable extinction. Any way, the selfish principles must be more distinctly verified and kept in action, than where men are much more rare. A large city certainly gives scope for the indulgence of the social disposition, by the facility of acquiring acquaintance, perhaps even friends. But I think you will have observed among friends in London less of that mutual affectionate dependence, which is one of the greatest charms of friendship, than where the facility of acquiring friends is less. There are too many resources at hand to allow the feelings, deportment, and conversation of one friend to become very deeply important to another. If a friend be alienated, it seems so easy to gain another, it seems so possible to advance an acquaintance into a friendship, and there are besides so many varieties and amusements to divert attention and occupy time, as preclude for the most part any severe anxiety respecting the disposition of an individual, unless a person of very unusual importance. Not to mention the numerous connexions and visits of mere routine, which have nothing at all to do with affection, I conjecture that the highest denomination which you will be inclined to give to the greatest number of what are called friendships in London is, agreeable acquaintance. Whilst each one amidst the crowds of London feels the insignificance of the individuals all around him, I have often wondered how much importance in respect to the rest each one is inclined to attribute to himself. It is tolerably certain, at least, that no man thinks himself of such small account as the rest regard him, if indeed they observe him at all. In the most transient observance, or passing along one of the most frequented streets, you can perceive a great many self-important airs. You might often be tempted to ask, "What prince or princess can that be?" if you did not know what a magnificent person is self in all his forms. I suppose that whatever consequence a man knows himself to possess, or imagines that he ought to possess, in some little sphere of society or business, he is apt unconsciously to wear the air of that consequence in the face of the large world, identifying that world with the diminutive sphere in which he is regent. If therefore the tenor of his feelings were to be put into a short speech, it would be to each man he met, "Do you know who I am, Sir ?" A man who has been frightening the inhabitants of two or three poor tenements, because they cannot pay him his rent, walks like a great lord, with the conscious importance derived from the difference between property and vassalage. A man who has been summoning his servants, to order and threaten them, comes forth with the authoritative aspect of commander-in-chief of an army. Nor can any senator carry along with him a clearer conviction that eloquence is the noblest of all human accomplishments, than the man who has just conquered his speechifying antagonist in a pot-house. One is apt to fancy, at least, that one perceives, in meeting the succession of faces, who is accustomed to be somewhere listened to, flattered, feared, obeyed, or opposed. These are unconscious assertions of the importance which individuals carry about them, amidst the multitude that does not care for them. But the style of dress, houses, and equipage, is a direct appeal to this multitude respecting the importance of the exhibitors. For though the first object of this style may be to maintain what is accounted a respectability in that circle of acquaintance to which the exhibitor is personally known, yet there is a frequent recollection of the hundred thousand eyes which are to look attention, respect, inquiry, admiration, or envy. Is not this indeed a principal object of the rank itself? What would the gaudy exterior at least of the rank be worth, unless there were a great number of less bedecked mortals to pay the homage of inferiority? You observe that the individuals who form the rank, or aspire to it, are, singly, richly endowed with its spirit and ostentation. But does it not strike you, that amidst so vast an aggregate of men there is a great miscalculation of the effect of individual display? In a poor country village, indeed, a brilliant beau, or a brilliant fair, would be a conspicuous and resplendent object; and would certainly obtain a comfortable sufficiency of the devoirs of gazing wonder. But what is this object in London? Out of this person's visiting company, who takes any notice of all this laborious and elegant parade? and what is the reward of all the care and expense deemed requisite to keep the exhibition fit to be seen? If a man has his name on the door of a fine house, why, so are a thousand other names, which you may count in an hour, and find, when you tell the last, that you have forgotten them all. But is it not very stupid of you not to recollect that Mr., or Dr., or Lord Such-a-one, claims your respect on the score of this fine house, and would deem it an immense degradation or misery to be reduced to inhabit a cottage like you? And what is a chariot with rich liveries, and fine horses, in London? It attracts not the slightest attention. You can any day see plenty such passing along a street, like bubbles along a brook; and so too, for what the passing spectators think or care, they might terminate their course. The case, however, is not entirely hopeless. Let a man of wealth and vanity (if the laws of police allow it, or obtaining a dispensation if they do not) harness twelve or more horses to his chariot, and he will tower at once like a fire-balloon, above the insignificant level where he has been but a common gentleman till now. Perhaps he has at this very time so many horses in the stable, and the public never the wiser. It is only for him to bring forth his resources, and his éclat will not only pervade all parts of the metropolis, but will soon reach every part of the kingdom, and perhaps be wafted over Europe and across the Atlantic. XLIV. TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE. [On the Metropolis, No. III.] March 22, 1803. MY DEAR FRIEND,-I suppose no man in the display of elegance and splendor has much solicitude to do honor to the other men that compose his rank, nor even to his particular friend. He could afford none of this virtuous expense of care and money for the sake of maintaining their importance in society. His own self, then, is the idol to be enshrined; and this interesting purpose is to be effected by a close resemblance to the style that prevails in his rank. But you would certainly wish so worthy a design to be accompanied by a more effectual method. As the object is to display the individual, the expedients employed ought, as much as possible, to distinguish the individual from his class, and from every social group where one is like another, and mark him with some original feature of this sublime; so that the whole wide public should soon come to recognize him, and each exclaim, "Here comes the man!" But the present method of servile imitation throws the individual into the crowd of a numerous class—an undistinguished particle in the heap ; as you often seen a company of brother oyster-shel's lying in the street, but I dare say never thought of remarking the important differences among them; so too, I am afraid, you regard the little distinctions of one from another, of which many self-important persons are very vain. And probably just so the mass of mankind regards them, as they flaunt it a moment in passing, and then disappear. They must adopt some thing bolder. If I were a man of rank, I would not be a man of rank. I would turn the means of the rank, that is to say, if I had the vanity of ostentation, into the distinctions of the individual. No matter that the expedients might be too fantastic to engage respect. One should think that at this late hour of the world's day and of human improvement, it is not exactly respect that any man can hope to command by the vain display of the present, or any exterior distinctions, which may be totally pure and separate from the smallest particle of virtue or sense. It is very amusing to observe the captivity to the principle of imitation on so vast a scale as it is displayed in a great city. It prevails, not only in the department which I have just noticed, but in every other; and, consequently, the varieties of manners and character are incomparably fewer than the number of men. You seldom meet with the bold, independent spirit, which, without asking leave of the sovereign modes and prescriptions of society, has formed its own habits, and without ostentation of singularity, can preserve them. What a scene for observation, if the inhabitants of a great city were as independent in habits as they are dissociated in affection; and indeed it is somewhat strange that assimilation can be so extensive, while attachment is so restricted. But so it is, that each one seems anxious to be recognized as somebody, not in the designation of an individual, but in becoming an imperceptible component part of a bulk, by means of a servile conformity to the modes of general society, or to the modes prevalent in a large class. They are like the golden ornaments of the Israelites, which passed by a melting process from a multitude of diminutives into one illustrious calf. The power of fashion, for instance, though it may be true that its authority to impose on its votaries a precise and perfect conformity in minutiæ is lessening, would yet in London mould fifty thousand persons in conformity to its most fantastic model in ten days, each of them being convinced of the truth of the maxim, "Out of the fashion, out of life.” And as to the other less general distinctions, society is thrown, if I may use the expression, into a few great common-places-forms of life, not apparently so much intended to classify the men, as the men seem intended as materials to make up the forms, from each of which a few selections would give you a tolerable idea of the whole. The illustrations will be obvious to you. stance of the class whose habitual business is exhibit forms and draperies, and to kill time? reciprocal complacency, they will not quarrel. of one another for looking-glasses. No counterfeiter of signatures, stamps, or quack preparations, was ever more careful of resemblance. I need not mention again in this reference, the routine, the parade, the luxury, and the artificial politeness of those who are eminent in wealth and distinction. I suppose a striking mutual conformity will be acknow ledged to pervade the rank. What do you think for in- What do you say of the great number who are devoting the whole energy of their being to the acquisition of large fortunes? There are certainly more differences in this than in the former class; but yet, are not their habits, their diction, and their preference of topics, very characteristically, and very similarly tinctured ? I have been told that even many of the literary men are too specifically marked by the distinctions of a class. It is said that their conversation has too much of the technical forms and subordinate details of literature, which ought to be merged and lost in the spirit of it; and that sometimes, what should be the dignified and various sense of cultivated and thinking men, is buried under a certain conceited slang that indicates a company of authors. The middling people fall into several classes, being too numerous a body, and too much diversified by locality, by various degrees of distance from wealth and poverty, and by wide differences of accomplishment or vulgarity, to be harmonized into one class marked by uniform characteristics. It is not indeed acknowledged as a class by many of the persons who compose it, who are not, like those who form the superior divisions of society, vain of it, and watchful to guard it with clear and jealous distinctions. You may observe a very prevalent wish to abdicate it, by the adoption as far as possible of the habits and distinctions of those whose means and state, however, defy their encroachment. The imitation too much resembles a string of boys, with paper helmets, and sticks for swords and muskets, mimicking "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," in every place where a regiment of soldiers is stationed and paraded. I need not remark on the points of resemblance among the lower order, that instantly everywhere refer the individual to his division. Perhaps the systematically wicked may, in each of their several classes, have a stronger principle of conformity, an assimilation approaching nearer to identity, than any other part of the inhabitants. I think it is observable, as a general fact, that though there are in the moral catalogue as many vices as virtues, and though human nature is prone to the worse, yet vicious character is not a very diversified thing. Here and there a depraved man of parts is able to expand the vicious character into latitude and variety; but the general operation of vice seems to be in a contrary direction; for while it degrades human faculties, it evidently contracts them to a narrower scope, and brings human beings the nearer together, the lower they sink, till at last they almost become one fetid, undistinguished element. In plain terms, there seem to be fewer obvious ways in which men can be bad, than in which they might be good. If we hear that a man is eminently vicious, we seem at once to know what his vices must be; but if we hear of a man being eminently good, we feel a greater choice and perplexity of conjecture. This is in consequence of our experience of the world having taught us, that vicious men are vicious |