The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1871-09-01
from the Rome Courier.
ARTsTocRACY.

We greatly fear that those Of our
readers who are personally acquaint-
ed with us will be disposed to laugh |
at our presumption when we state in
all seriousness that we have decided |
aristocratic prejudices. That hav-
ing no illGstrious ancestral line TO /
boast of ourselves, it would seem a
species of affectation in us 10 pro-
TESS to see and recognize in others
that claim to superior worth and
responsibility that should always be
associated with pure and noble
blood. So it is. We inStinctively
render homage to gentility when
and wherever it is our good fortune
to be thrown in its presence.
There is something about the true
gentleman and lady that makes it.
self felt under any and all circum'
stances. Whether surrounded with
wealth or cropping in poverty, it mat
tiers not, there is high bred cour-
tesy, dignity of carriage, gentle
ness of manner that bespeaks them
nobly born.
No dogma was ever enunciated
more specious and more mischievous
than that put forth by Thomas JEFF
ferson. "That all men were Great
ed equal" Therei is just as much
difference between the gentleman
and the boor, even in the moment
they first saw the light, as there is
between the most spirited Arabian
and the ve1icst Conestogy. 1t is
not the circumstances surrounding
birth that makes the difference, the
wealth and poverty Of the subject
These have nothing to do with it
do not enhance nor compromise its
claims, it is the blood alone, that in
nate principle, which pervades and
distinguishes the lives and charac-
tiers of certain lines, descending from
generation, transmitted by father to
son, sometimes subdued and borne
down by poverty and misfortune,
sometimes overshadowed by cal
umny and wrong, but continually
arising in all its native majesty and
exacting from the commonalty that
defferential respect which is natur-
ally its due.
We have seen the gentleman bow
ed beneath a weight of misfortunes ;
we have seen him writing under
the cruel stabs of calumny, but we
have never seen him debaSed. AZ
Fiction may sadden his heart, but it
can not subdue his soul. Amid the
accumulated weight of fortune, he
stands the gentleman still. Indeed
it is in adversely, rather, that the
ennobling qualities of birth and
blood are most to be seen and adj
mired
He who boweth beneath the iron
weight ofncglect and of poverty can
still maintain his self-rcspect and
moral integrity, is the true gentle
man, and no degree of prosperity or
adulation could for a moment make
him forgetful of his respect to his
interiors.
A man tried and confirmed by the
ordeal of adversely can be trusted in
prosperity, and it is this power to
resist temptation to overcome the
untoward frowns of his surroundings,
this disposition to despise little
action and to scorn meanness that
constitutes gentility, or if you will,
the aristocrat.
There is a false aristocracy, how
ever, that is to be despised, bogus
responsibility that thinks like the
daw in the fable, by arraying itself
in the plumes of the true to pass for
that which nature never designed
them.
This class has very appropriately
been called Scottish aristocracy,"
and pIumes itself upon its wealth
and gilded appearance. Its parade
only ssrves to make it appear the
more ridiculous and to expose its
true character. There are some,
however, foolish enough to be daz-
zlcd by its tinsel, and to defer to its
pretensions. The homage of these,
however, is not worth the seeking,
for as soon as adversely strips their
shoddy idols of their borrowed plum
age, they are ready to fall away
from and despise them.
The man who is not respected in
poverty need not hope to be popu
! lar in wealth, and the man of true
principles cares as little for the neg
lect of fools as he does for the adu-
lations of sycophants.
"The Southern aristocracy" has
been hurled at the elite of Southern
society as a term of reproach; let us
cherish it as proud inheritance,
and show the contemplate shoddy-
ties that, amid all the gloom and
misfortune that the superior num-
bers and resources of a cruel and
! barbarian foe can heap upon us, that
we can be gentlemen end ladies
! zAsn