ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.-WILLIAM HAZLITT. Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two-vulgarity and affectation. It may be said of them truly that "thin partitions do their bounds divide." There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel. We must have a strong tendency to that which we are always trying to avoid; whenever we pretend, on all occasions, a mighty contempt for anything, it is a pretty clear sign that we feel ourselves very nearly on a level with it. Of the two classes of people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at, and endeavoring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. These two sets of persons are always thinking of one another; the lower of the higher with envy, the more fortunate of their less happy neighbors with contempt. They are habitually placed in opposition to each other; jostle in their pretensions at every turn; and the same objects and train of thought (only reserved by the relative situation of either party,) occupy their whole time and attention. The one are straining every nerve and outraging common sense, to be thought genteel; the others have no other object or idea in their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This is but poor spite; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be merely not that which one heartily despises, is a very humble claim to superiority: to despise what one really is, is still worse. Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity. It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes itself up and revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judges of the worth of every thing by name, fashion, opinion; and hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities, or sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious and fantastic conceit on the wretchedness and wants of others. Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the "Great Vulgar and the Small" is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves, naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers: scandal and satire prevail most in country places; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense and decency. True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiency of others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a sign-post, nor Homer hold his head the higher for being in the company of a Grub-street bard. Real power, real excellence does not seek for a foil in imperfection; nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleen and affectation; -of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as its inferiors. SOUNDS.-ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. I. Hearken, hearken! The rapid river carrieth The hoary ocean; And the squirrel leaps adown, Hidden and yet vocal, seem Man's despondence, nature's calm, All these sounds the river telleth, Which ever and anon he swelleth By a burden of his own, In the ocean's ear, Ay! and ocean seems to hear, With an inward gentle scorn, Smiling to his caverns worn. II. Hearken, hearken! The child is shouting at his play The widow moans as she turns aside To shun the face of the blushing bride, While, shaking the tower of the ancient church, The marriage bells do swing; And in the shadow of the porch An idiot sits, with his lean hands full Of hedgerow flowers and a poet's skull, While he sticketh the gaudy poppies red Where all sweet fancies grew instead. His mortal brows shall wear. And a baby cries with a feeble sound 'Neath the weary weight of the life new-found; And an old man groans-with his testament Only half signed-for the life that's spent; And lovers twain do softly say, As they sit on a grave, "for aye, for aye!" And foeman twain, while Earth, their mother, Looks greenly upward, curse each other. A school-boy drones his task, with looks A beldame's age-cracked voice doth sing A maid forgotten weeps alone, Muffling her sobs on the trysting-stone; A sinner screams for one hope more ; A piper's music out on the floor; And nigh to the awful Dead, the living Low speech and stealthy steps are giving, And he who on that narrow bier Has room enow, is closely wound In a silence piercing more than sound. III. Hearken, hearken! God speaketh to thy soul; Using the supreme voice which doth confound All life with consciousness of Deity, All senses into one; As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John, The cloud-gate of the future, turned to see The memory of a solemn vow, Which pierceth the din of a festival To one in the midst-and he letteth fall The cup, with a sudden trembling. IV. Hearken, hearken! God speaketh in thy soul; With feeble steps across this earth of mine, Look up to heaven and see how like a scroll, My right hand hath thine immortality V. Hearken, hearken! Shall we hear the lapsing river THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.-GOLDSMITH. Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd, A man he was to all the country dear, Nor e'er had chang'd, nor wished to change his place; Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow, Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, |