Morning journal and courier., 1892-02-24
The Decline of Svyagger

what recent and the transition hardly com plete. But we may take it as established
 that, for the moment at any rate, swaggel is not the fashion. No doubt the con.
 sciousness of personal merit, and possible
 superiority, is as strong in human nature
 as ever. But most people are contented tc | acquiesce in the knowledge of the fact
 and are willing not only to forego the par. | ticular form of its expression, which is known as "swagger," but even to live | without expressing it visably at all. The | most obvious and disagreeabls form oi | self lf-assertion, which consists in making | other people conscious of their inferiority by intensely upleasant and supercilious behavior, has, of course, been dead and done with as social claim for half a gen. eration. High-born and wealthy heroes of the old novelists, who were too great to speak at the breakfast-table, and "turned to fling & morsel to their dogs with an air of high-bred nonchslance," exist no longer in fiction, and very rarely in life. MT. Grandcourt was perhaps the last of them. But swsgger in its minor and more anu sing manifestations is also dying; and though it is premature to write its epitaph, We may call attention to some of the symp- toms of it's decay. One of the later forms OI sWaggtE. lnucn aHccteu DN men or the bachelor leisured class, and especially by the much-abused 'lotus-saters" of club land, was the nil admirari attitude It had quite a voyage for a time, and in sd- dition to conveying an expression of su- periority, saved great deal of trouble. Older men who had seen life were spared the effort of hearing about it again; and young men who had not were enabled to convey the impression that they had This form of swagger had positive merits in a negative form. It is still in use as a weapon against the bore, but as fashion able cult it exists no longer. It is ss dead as wigs and powder.
 Soldiers, for instance, are now among the quietest of men, not marked of by any mannerisms of dress or demesnor from other we'll bred and agreeable gentle men. No doubt competition, in place of purchase, has somewhat reduced the number of men of private fortune who hold her majssty's commission. But even if that consideration could account for the difference, the change is only partial, and the cavalry is still a service mainly off cered by men of means. But the heavy "plunger" swagger which once distin guished these gentlemen in their relations to men in less fashionable professions has almost disappeared, except among a few OL luc very OA1 clhkcEs "AO learn, and the very young ones who have not learned better. Some evidence of the change of manner among soldiers may be found in their increased popularity in gen eral society-among men, that is; for it may be doubted whether the other sex quite shares the satisfaction with which men hail the absence of the military swagger. Sir Thom de Boots no longer comes in "scowiing round the room sc- cording to his fashion, and face which is kind enough to assume an expression which seems to ask, And who the devil are you, sirr as clearly as if the general had himself given utterance to the words. |" On the contrary, he ss a rule makes him. self exceedingly pleasant, claims no more attention than is spontaneously rendered to him and his known position in the ser vice, and perhaps forgets to fill his glass while engaged in explaining the theory of the Kriegspiel to some inquiring youngs- ter.
 Among minor types We may notice that the scholastic swaggerer, whom Thackeray denounced among his university snobs, has almost, if not quite, disappeared- partly, perhaps, because scholars are now turned out by the hundred instead of by alfdozens, and their monopoly of a cer- tain kind of knowledge is broken; partly because good taste has grown with knowl- edge, and scholars may also be men of the world. No doubt, with wisdom cometh understanding; but we wish that those men of the age, the scientific gentlemen" scholars are rather down in the world just now-could discern the signs of the times in the matter ot swagger. At pres ent they possess, with Jews, mushroom financiers, and very successful tradesmen the Egerton Bompuses of the day-al- most a monopoly ot the amount of obvi- ous and positive swagger visible. Wheth- CT in public controversy or social inter course, the scientific person sometimes swsggers with unquenchable energy. In those public discussions which lend such piuuancy to the columns of the Times in the dull season, he still delights to bounce from his hygienic mountain home on some wretched disputant, and show him up as an ass-and a fraudulent ass-in that strong native Saxon undimmed by "ped antry" and "silly compliance" which less gifted minds call education and courtesy. And if some weak controversialists writes in the victims defence to gay that, after all, what was in the poor mans mind was perhaps so-and-so, how promptly some otEer scientific person takes up the cud- gels and knocks the nonsense out of himi These sterling qualities have so endeared him to the social circle that the mere ref erence to "Professor"-an honorable ti
 tie which seems to be monopolized by the expounders of natural sciencs-is usually enough to drive any number of plain men half frantic. No doubt society has itself to blame in a measure for the tyranny of the professors. It over-estimated the value of the facts which they knew, be- fore they could be weighed and compared with other forms of information. The modesty of Fsraday, with his mild fermu- h, "It may be so," and of Dsrwin--who was a country squire as well as a biologist are forgotten in the swaeger of the new men. But swsgger, though not confined to paryenus, Is, after all, the PaTvenu's be- setting temptation; and the scientific men" are the parvenus of knowledge.
 Swagger, nowadays, is mainly limited to people living in little worlds of their own. Contact with the big world and realities rubs it away Petty country squires, bur jed in remote neighborhoods, often give themselves airs most comical to behold by those capable of comparing what they are with what they claim to be. The bump tious scientific gentlemen who have made their class a by-word, the bloated fnan- cier, and the overgrown shop keeper, even when success is attained, are only on the verge of the world where their training should begin. Their time has been other wise, andi let up nope, more prontably, occupied; and if they do not reform, their children probably will, and will do their best to reclaim their erring parents. For there is no lesson which that increasingly wise young person, the young man on his promotion, has laid more to heart than that "swagger," or. as he prefers to call it, "side, l" does not pay; and whatever his private opinion as to his own merits, he distinguishes very clearly between the swagger which does not pay and judicicus self-advertisement which does. Moreover, being an educated young person with some claims to good taste, he is discriminating even in the means he takes to advertise himself, having recourse only as last and doubtful resource to self-assertion or ec- | centricities of dress and manner.