The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-07 00:00:00

CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS

(From the " World of London," in Blackwood's Magazine.)
The Slow School of fashionable or aristocratic life, com-
prises those who think that, in the nineteenth century, other
means must be taken to preserve their order in its high and
responsible position than those which, in dark ages, conferred
honour on the tallest or the bravest. They think, and think
wisely, that the only method of keeping above the masses,
in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further
into the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forget-
ting, in a fair neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth.
their purer blood, and urging the generous contest for fame,
regardless of the allurements of pleasure, or the superior ad-
vantages of fortune. In truth, we may ask, what would be•
come of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they came, as a
body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their black-
leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set
of Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramonchi, who
caper on the platform outside for their living ? The populace
would pelt these harlequin horse jockeys of fashiontble life
off their stage, if there was nothing better to be seen anside ;
but it fortunately happens that there is better.
We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families,
a few men of original, commanding, and powerful intellect;
many respectable in most departments of intellectual rivalry ;
many more laborious, hard-working men; and about the
same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed, con-
ceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the
„e pnmmonlv called the educated

_.Hoer ot LIJUSC CM. tliv"sy
We refer you to the aristocracies of other coun-
tries, and we think we may safely say, that we have more
men of that class, in this country, who devote themselves to
- high duties of their station, regardless of its
call pleasures,
nractiy the re-

same g

'ecognise

than in any oLo., , ---- •
sponsibilities of their rank, and do not shirk from them ;
men who think they have something to do, and something
to repay, for the accidents of birth and fortune—who, in the
senate, the field, or in the less prominent, hut not less noble,
career of private life, act, as they feel, with the poet :
" At heros, et decus, et core non fecimus ipsi,

Vix ex nostra voco

It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name
we forget, that the grand advantage of high birth is, placing
a man as far forward at twenty-five as another man is at fifty.
We might, as a carollary to this undeniable proposition, add,
that birth not only places, but keeps a man in that advance
of his fellows, which, in the sum of life, makes such vast
ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
The advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early
enrolling themselves among the aristocracy of power, has,
like everything in the natural and moral world, its compen-
sating disadvantage. They lose in one way what they gain
in another ; and although many of them become eminent in
public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers
who enter the arena, become great. They are respected,
heard, and admired, by virtue of a class-prepossession in their
favour ; yet, after all, they must select from the ranks of the
aristocracy of talent their firmest and best supporters, to
whom they may delegate the heavy responsibilities of busi-
ness, and lift from their own shoulders the burden of respon-

sible power.
One striking example of the force of birth, station, and as-
sociation in public life, never fails to occur to us as an extra-
ordinary examplelof the magnifying power of these extrinsic
qualities, in giving to the aristocracy of birth a consideration
which, though often well bestowed, is yet oftener bestowed
without any desert whatever ; and that title to admiration
and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and
suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the
illustrious dead to the undistinguished living.
Without giving a catalogue raisonee of the slow fellows,
(we use the term not disrespectfully, but only in contradis-
tinction to the others,) we may observe that, besides the
public service in which the great names are sufficiently known,
you have poets, essayists, dramatists, astronomers, geolo-
gists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than all, phi-
lanthropists. In compliment to 'lnman nature, we take the
liberty merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart
and Lord Ashley. The works of the slow fellows, especially
their poetry, indicate in a greater or less degree the social
position of the authors; seldom or never deficient in good
taste, and not without feeling, they lack power and daring.
The smooth style has their preference, and their verses
smack of the school of Lord Fanny ; indeed, we know not
that, in poetry or prose, we can point out one of our low
fellows of the present day rising above judicious mediocrity.
It is a curious fact, that the most daring and original of our
noble authors have, in their day, been fast fellows ; it is only
necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to
intellect in a small way. These patronize a drawing-master,
not to learn to draw, but to learn to talk of drawing; they
also study the Penny Magazine and other profound works, to
the same purpose ; they patronize the London University and
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as far as
lending their names ; for, being mostly of the class of fashion-
able screws, they take care never to sucscribe any thing.
They have a refined taste in shawls, and are, consequently,
in the confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as
examples of every thing that is good, They take chocolate
of a morning, and tea in the evening ; drink sherry with a
biscuit, and wonder how people can eat those hot lunches.
They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills ; and, by
virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always con-
sulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a
a guinea. They talk of music, of which they know some-
thing—of books, of which they know little—and of pictures,
of which they know less : they have always read " the last
novel," which is as much as they can well carry : they know
literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House ;
but, if they meet them in Park-lane, look as if they never
saw them before : they are very peevish, have something to
say against every man, and always say the worst first : they
are very quiet in their manner, always sly, and never use any
of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows . they treat their
inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, " honest
friend," " my good man," and so on, but have very little
heart, and less spirit.
They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to
fashion. They are afraid of the former, who are always
ridiculing them and their pursuits, by jokes theoretical and
practical. If the fast fellows ascertain that a slow fellow
affects sketching, they club together to annoy him, talking of
the autumnal tints, and the gliding of the western hemisphere;
if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage or a root of
mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear
it is a great curiosity in his line; if an entomologist, they
are sure to send him away " with a flea in his ear." If he
affects poetry, the fast fellows make one of their servants
transcribe, from Bell's Life, Seroggins's poetical version of
the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree, or some such stuff;
and having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist upon having
his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a
thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow
brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call
gagging,. and genteel people quizzing, but with a seriousness
and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the slow
fellow inexpressibly ridiculous.
It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow
fellows, that they do not make a better figure ; it seems won-
derful that they who glide swiftly down the current of fortune
with wind and tide, should be distanced by those who, close-
hauled upon a wind, are beating up against it all their lives ;
but so it is ;—the compensating power that rules material
nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much
is given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to
improve it. Those rho rely more or less on claims extrinsic,
are sure to be surpassed by those whose power is from within.
After all, the great names of our nation (with here and there
an exception to prove the rule) are plebeian.

Mankind may be divided into three classes—those who
learn from the experience of others ; they are happy men—
those who learn from their own experience: they are wise
men—and lastly, those who learn neither from their own
nor from other people's experience: they are fools.