The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-08-15
LAWRENCEBURG, IND.
Comparative Metropolitan vulgar


Great capitals, socially governed by
Princes who are hungry for excitement
and full of people with too much money
and time, will occasionally have rushes,
and London is only remarkable, because
at this moment the journals, being with
out news, and overwhelmed by wave of
puerility-unaccountable, except on the
theory that "soft" weather makes soft
heads-pay as much attention to any
furor of the kind as they would in ordi-
nary times to great political drama.
We only deprecate the abuse constantly
showered on American and Russian cities
for doing the same thing.
London is Just as vulgar as New York
and Just as frivolous as st. Petersburg,
and should in honesty acknowledge those
facts instead of enjoying, as it did re-
Gently, columns of sneers at Russian Off
GERS for borrowing money to buy bouquets
for favorite singers, and the Americans
for buying French actresses, when "no-
body in America understands French"
About a million in America think in
French, but is society to be bored with
pathological grittiness of this kind? A
vulgar crush" is not the less vulgar be-
cause Princes take the lead in it, nor is
the applause of mob less contemplate
because the mob is English and Leicester
squarish, instead of American, with a
sprinkling of French Canadians and
Louisianians. The English waste their
money on any fashionable object just as
recklesslv as the Russians, and are much
more vulgarly proud of it.
Moscow might have recorded the Car
evitch'spurchase of kittens ata bazaar, but
Moscow would not have blazoned their
prize in every paper. We do not blame
the rush except as an absurdity, and are
not disposed to moralize over waste
which, at all events, benefited a useful
hospital and great French institution !;
but we object to the vaporing of a socie-
ty which, doing these things, says of
itself that it is not frivolous and not vul-
gar, and not abjectly ready to follow the
fashion, but is, as compared with the rest
of the world. self-restrained, and digni-
fed, and independent. The English
praise of their society for solid qualities
is Just now as tresome as the French
praise of theirs for hospitality, the
hymns of Germans over their national
Gemuethlichkeit, or American exulta-
tions over the absence of caste distinc-
tions on their side of the water.
Frenchmen excited can be as inhospi-
table as cuckoos; Germans displeased are
as hard as granite; Americans with
standing" can be as exclusive as Spanish
mobiles; and Englishmen, with the "fit'
on them and in for gregarious excite
ment can be as frivolous and as vulgar
as bar-maid show. That potentiality
is misfortune, not vice; but lying is
the latter, and there is on this matter a
great deal of lying 1t is time that the
English should acknowledge that they
are just assilly as their neighbors, and see
that during the past month London has
presented a spectacle which any keen
French or American satirist would have
been justified in describing as an exhibi-
tion of the frivolous vulgarity and sheep
ishness, inherent in people which is
afraid to admire art till Prince admires,
and then will admire anything that costs
enough.