SUPREME LOVE. THIS is the sky, and thou art a star; The white moon is nigh, and this is the sky, How do I shine in thy love and thy bliss! In thy lustre divine how I tremble and shine! Far under our feet, the world lessens to light: Stars fixed in the blue, and stars shooting to fall, So still, love, so deep, heaven closes us round: This is the sky, and thou art a star! All bright things go by, for this is the sky. Do we live ? must we die? Is the world then so far? O this is the sky, and thou art a star! VOL. X. N JOHN BANKS. SNOBBERY AS A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC. It is an accepted axiom that snobbery is an English specialty ;-that a strongly-marked thread of the vice is inextricably interwoven in the woof of the national character;-that Britons, in short, though they may never, never be slaves, are, have been, and to all appearances ever, ever will be snobs. Sundry other accusations have at different times been brought against us as a nation, in examining which there would be little interest, either because there is nothing specially characteristic in them, or because they are manifestly unjust, and have mostly been urged by those who do not at all understand us. But in this matter of snobbery, the accusation is made by ourselves; and there is undeniably such an amount of truth in it as to make a fair examination of the meaning of the charge, and the degree of justice with which it may be considered a national blot, not uninteresting. What is meant by "snobbery" as a specially English vice? What is the idea in the minds of those who are continually complaining of this trait in English character? Of course, the mind of every reader at once recurs to Thackeray's immortal "Book of Snobs"— the great manual of the subject-the anti-snob's vade-mecum. You want to know what is meant by snobbery? Read Thackeray; and there you will see and understand to your heart's content. But I think that any one who wishes to estimate the amount of truth there is in the matter considered as a national characteristic, may well object to the theory and pictures of snobbery set forth in the great humorist's work. All the phases of character held up to scorn by the satirist may be legitimate objects of ridicule or aversion, but if they are all to be labelled as specifically snobs, the reader will find the definitive result to be, that every man is a snob who is not a perfect Christian and a perfect gentleman. The vigour of his arm has led the author to throw his net over too large a portion of the great subject of human failings. If there is any truth in the existence of snobbery as a British specialty-if there is any interest in examining the matter from the point of view which regards it as a distinctive trait of our national character, we must have a much more accurate and restricted definition of the meaning of the term snobbery. What is it to be a snob? Is the man who murders his father for that reason a snob? Surely not! A wretch, but not necessarily a snob. Is the man who beats his wife a snob? Surely not on that account! He is an unmanly ruffian, but it does not follow that he is a snob. Is the man who picks a pocket a snob? Surely it is a misuse of language to call him so on that ground. He is a scoundrel, but not necessarily a snob. Is the man who habitually uses gross foul language a snob? Not necessarily for that reason. He is a blackguard, but it may be that he is not a snob. Is the man who is wholly ignorant of and excluded from "good society" a snob? The ploughman at the plough's tail, the blacksmith at his anvil, the shopman behind his counter-are these men all snobs? Unquestionably there is no more reason for supposing that they must needs be such, than for supposing his Grace the Duke to be such. Was the man who said to a certain concrete Duke, when he was left tête-à-tête with him in a railway-carriage after a third passenger had left the rail, who was, as he was informed, another nobleman of the same rank, "Lord! to think of his Grace talking all the time so haffably to little snobs like you and me!" Was that man a snob? By no means, as far as the story goes, does it prove him to have been one. He misused the term, and was not upon that occasion a snob because he supposed, and supposing admitted, himself to be one. Is the man who invites his friend to dinner, and gives him a scrag of mutton and a glass of twopenny ale, a snob? Not at all so. may be an honest, good fellow, or he may be a stingy curmudgeon; but there is in either case nothing snobbish in his proceeding. But the man who invites his friend to dinner, and gives him a bottle of beastliness at twenty-four shillings the dozen, calling it the claret which Lord Nozoo always drinks ;-is he a snob? Ay, verily is he!-a prince of snobs! The man who stays in the town all the year because he can't afford to leave it; the man who stays because he is a miser, and won't afford to leave it; the man who does go holiday-making to amuse himself when he ought not to afford it;-are they snobs? Not a man of them is the real, genuine article. But the man who, being detained in town, pulls down his blinds, and lives in the back parlour, that he may be supposed to be away, he is a true and undeniable snob. The man who does this or that, however objectionable his practice may be, and tells you that he does so because he likes it, and because he chooses to do it, is no snob. But the man who does this or that, and professes to like this or that, because "it is the right thing!"— because it is all the go!" (horrid phrase !)-that man is a snob to the marrow of his bones. Horace, who, despite his professional adulation of Augustus and Mecænas, was a man of an essentially anti-snobbish nature, speaks of imitatores as servum pecus-the servile herd of imitators. Now this servile nature is quintessentially snobbish. Still it is needful to guard against misunderstanding. The man who imitates because it strikes him that what he has seen another do may be useful or pleasant to him, may be void of originality, but is not therefore a snob. The imitator whose imitation stamps him as a snob is the man who thinks that he will obtain the admiration of a third person by imitating somebody whom he conceives to be admired. He is the man who never dares to be and to appear himself—who distrusts his own qualifications so much that he is always anxious to present himself in the garb of some one else. He has at the very bottom of his heart so profound a contempt for himself, his own social position, and his own proper character, that he cannot venture to meet the eyes of his fellow-men, save under the disguise of assumed character, habits, ways, associations. Jones the drysalter has so lowly an opinion of drysalting, and of himself as a professor of that craft, that he cannot endure that Brown the grocer should imagine that be, Jones, on the occasion of his excursion up the river on Sunday, was in the company only of drysalters and grocers like themselves. He must needs talk loudly of Captain Schwartzbein and Sir Spavin Hedger as having been members of the company on that festive occasion. And Jones, whom no amount of native vulgarity, nor even any want of probity in his drysaltering transactions, would have justified us in taxing with snobbery proper, stands confessed a proper snob. It is needless to multiply such cases, as, of course, might be done to infinity. The diagnosis of true snobbery may be considered to have been made sufficiently clear or at least, in the language of parliamentary draftsmen, of what shall be held to be snobbery for the purposes of this article. Well, then, is snobbery, thus defined, a British specialty? It will hardly be doubted by those who, like Ulysses, have known the manners and the cities of many nations, that it must be admitted to be so. And now let us see what this phenomenon means, considered as an outcome and manifestation of national character. It is a remark as old as preachments about the golden mean, and "medio tutissimus ibis," that every vice is but the excess of a virtue. The failings, the follies, the meannesses of men are but the seamy side of qualities, often lovable, sometimes noble. Now, is not this snobbery so much reviled, so ridiculous always, so hateful sometimes, in truth the seamy side, the excess of a tendency to look up to, to admire, to reverence something or somebody else, as better, greater, grander, or more beautiful than ourselves? The simple, genuine, independent-minded man, estimating himself, his position, his worth, at their true value, neither more nor less, will never be a snob. True! But neither will the man whose self-conceit and vanity are such as to make it impossible for him to admire another more than himself. Ridiculous, odious he may be in twenty different ways, but he will never be a genuine snob. Now, does this idea of the true quality and genesis of snobbery tally with other easily-recognisable specialties of English character? Surely it does so tally. Surely it is true, that we are specially a people prone to look up to an ideal nobler than that which we consider to be incarnated in our individualities—a people capable of and with a tendency to reverence. That we are specially so, will not be doubted by those who are well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of other nations-particularly those of the so-called Latin race. The pestilentially false notion that the true dignity of human nature is promoted by the universal acceptance of the doctrine that every man is equal to his fellow, has never found a congenial soil in this island. But it must be remembered that there are two ways in which this idea is apt to present itself to minds incapable of reverence. It is not only a habit of mind to think that, as it has been phrased, every man is as good as every other and better! But the thought often presents itself in the shape of, every man is as bad as every other— and worse! Phases of national character would not be far to seek in which one of the most strongly marked and prominent characteristics is an incapacity for reverence-an ever-present tendency, not to exalt, to look up to, and to admire, but to pull down, to deny, and to depreciate a tendency, not to such belief in excellence of any kind as would compel the believer in it to feel it to be better than what he sees in himself, but to disbelieve in all such superiority. And among these peoples there are no snobs. English people are often much struck by the absence of snobbery from the social relationships and manifestations of those peoples, and to be very sensible of the charm-for there is such a charm arising from the freedom from it. But if they would only consider what the qualities are by the loss of which this absence of snobbery is paid for, they would gladly compound for the disgust occasioned by the ridiculousness, the littleness, the absurdities, the meannesses of British snobbery! Let us glance for an instant at the attitude of this snobbish British people during the period of trouble and anxiety through which the nation had recently to pass, while the life of the heir to the Crown was in danger. Most assuredly such a national attitude, such a manifestation of national sentiment-if, as is probable, it might be witnessed on a similar occasion among our Teuton kin-would be wholly out of the question among, and is almost inconceivable to, a people of Latin race. And we are often rated for the snobbery and "flunkyism" of our interest in, and regard for, royalty and all that surrounds it. No doubt we have all been showing our snobbery |