"PRIVILEGED PERSONS." BY GEORGE RAYMOND, ESQ. "'Twas a little strange, perhaps, but then Mr. So-and-So is a privileged man." Who is there, but at some period or other has not heard this most offensive declaration? The "privileged man" may be considered the spoiled child of the great civil family, and consequently a most odious member of the establishment-an aconite in the garden of our social world, and carrying pestilence into the Araby of domestic life. For the very purpose of evil does he appear to have been nourished, common consent assigning to him certain immunities, to others forbidden because the indulgence thereof is unwholesome; and with complacency, even approbation, do we look on the violations of all discipline, which would consign his fellow-men to disgrace and chastisement. The grossest outrages are received as playful peculiarities, actions, however preposterous, acquire a perfectly new name, and signification, for "That in the captain's but a choleric word, The disgusting immunities thus conceded, are no boon which our generosity offers to venial errors, or the slight infirmities of greatness. We do not say, in our admiration of the far higher claim which solid merit has on our applause. No-our concession appears to have been given precisely where it should have been withheld, namely to men who exhibit humanity rather after the doctrine of Hobbes than Shaftesbury, having a much closer affinity with vice than virtue. Their claims on us, would, in fact, seem to transcend the sublimest of nature's work, for the very spots on the sun carry with them still the imputation of blemishes; but the "betises" of your privileged man, like the offal of the grand lama, become sanctified in the nostrils of folly, and we who pay homage, no less idolaters than the benighted inhabitants of Thibet. "He is a privileged man!" Society offers not so repulsive a decree. "He is a privileged man!" Community cannot be scandalized by a baser bigotry. Owning no allegiance he tramples down all boundaries, breaks through the fences of propriety, trespasses with his cloven feet into the parterres of civil order, nor is he at any time "to be prosecuted as the law directs." What are his claims-where are his pretensions? Assuredly never is he a good man-rarely do we find him one of birth -mostly in gross ignorance-selfish and sordid always. What-what is he? A wealthy poltroon! As it has been said of one sex, there is no insolence like the insolence of a beauty, so of the other, is there no assumption like the arrogance of gold-and as gold, not unfrequently falls to men of small minds, mean origin, and barren education, "Given to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil— its demoralizing chances are thereby greatly multipiled, and it becomes a flaming torch in the hands of a bedlamite. Martyrdom implies not necessarily that its cause is sound; for, alas! there is scarcely any indignity to which people will not tamely submit, if it be inflicted only by a reeling minister of gold, "that last corrup tion of degenerate man." So appetent are they of this insolence, that they offer themselves unholy martyrs to the tyranny and contempt of the obscene Dagon. Sacrifices are made under the delusion of favours received, and they stomach the affronts of a gilded despot, as wiser persons swallow the most nauseous medicine, under the persuasion they will be the better for it; trusting thereby their moral and intellectual being to a quack, more infamous than Cagliostro himself. But then their wounds like those of Telephus, receive a balm from the edge which gave them, for an insult at the hands of privileged wealth, bestows on men's vanity what it despoils from their honour. The coarse jest or brazen slander meets with a bland assent (for Plutus is a mighty pluralist, and is sometimes held the very god of wit) and thus the dull heathen falls before the impure deity, and yields him worship, as the Indians pay homage to the spirits of evil. Privilege, though in itself but the bolstered title for abuse, is the prolific parent of a countless family; for as he, who having already extorted a smaller loan, is of all men the most in advance in the demand of an extraordinary favour, so your privileged man no sooner becomes confessed in his first immunities, than he contracts a debt with society, which being beyond all hope of liquidation, he treats as a contract despised or a rightful inheritance. In this strange world, there are persons fond of being cheated, not because as Shenstone has observed, they who cheat are generally in good humour, but because it is held a kind of distinction to be thought worthy the spoliation of one so high in the commission of Mammon. And verily they have their reward-for to be exalted on the stage of public contempt, or raised to the pinnacle of real fame, is with them but one elevation, and whether pointed at by the finger of derision, or looked up to by the eye of admiration, is with them but one distinction. A separation from the vulgar is far more coveted than an estrangement from vice, and so bitter is their hatred to the pest of poverty, that they would owe their leap from its vicinity to the kick of ignorance. Such is the moral portrait of the man, and such, I fear, the taste of society in respect of the arts. But to illustrate. In person, the distinguished individual already glanced at, is rarely full blown in his spring of life-the flower of youth is scarcely more than a blossom in his quality. He is at least fifty, a period of life, at which it is said, a man begins to be in earnest. He is indeed and verily in earnest. His approach into any particular circle, is indicated by some boisterous ebullition, denominated by his cultivators good nature-a loud laugh, and a rolling gait, lending variety to so much sweetness. This hierarch of Mammon scatters his incense about him with the benediction of his holy affronts, whereat the eusebia of the true believers, is charming to behold. Dress, he despises, yet sua cuique dignitas, for it is a contempt only of such costume, which usage has established for all other men, otherwise he is the most contemptible of coxcombs, for he is a coxcomb at the wrong extreme-slovenly and loose in his attire, "His doublet all unbraced, his stockings fouled, Ungartered, and downgyvèd to his ancle." He enters into public pour jouer grand rôle. Observe him, pressing through the throng of some certain convocation, his hands buried in his pockets, speaking at all, yet addressing himself to no one, he makes his way to that point of the apartment, where the difficulty of his approach, is one evidence of the importance of his coming. "Tis an evening assembly of both sexes-a cavatina is about to be commenced-attention has been obtained in the expectant party, and a fair performer has already struck the first note on a full-toned harp. No moment could be better chosen for this charlatan. Forcibly he urges the passagethe general purpose is suspended, and the insolent familiarities of the favoured guest, challenge a perfectly fresh attention. He occupies the whole stage-his observations are personal and far-fetched-he deals in family incidents, and is liberal in domestic secrets. With nauseous jocularity he opens an attack on some, and throws out injudicious insinuations on others-general and great is the applause-and a loud laugh, or an indecent stare, concludes the introductory scene of this disgusting drama. An example of one species (for there are many) of this genius, lately fell under my observation. Mr. Edward Howard was one of those who, at three-and-thirty years of age, had yet to learn an unlucky man but too frequently implied an imprudent one, and that the complaints with which disappointment assails the goddess of fortune, should rather have been reserved for the demon of indolence. To a good education, good person, and friendly disposition, he united a sanguine temper, but Howard, unhappily, was one of the most indolent beings in existence. His ambition had been to make a figure, but so sickly in action, that it was a heat which consumed, rather than a flame which animated. "In opem se copia fecit," poor in the midst of riches, he at this period of life possessed but little solid acquirement, no direct employment, decreasing resources, and five children. He had renounced a small government appointment, in honour of his genius, and had withdrawn. himself from another of an intellectual nature, in tender regard to his love of ease; so that his ambition growing still fainter, by never stirring abroad, had communicated much of its disease to his natural good temper, until he found himself enveloped in difficulties which he nursed like beloved children, and the only companions his own offspring of flesh seemed likely to enjoy. In fact, "le pénible fardeau de n'avoir rien à faire," sat heavily upon him, and each succeeding day, which added something to the burden, diminished something also of his small power of resistance. His wife, unfortunately, was a being who, under the dominion of a single passion, was in more absolute subjection than though impelled by many. Love for her husband, uncompounded of provident care, and disdaining the wisdom of all human thought, occupied every avenue of her heart, and overpowered every other operation of her mind. She loved him no more for his virtues, than she esteemed him no less for his errors-the evil with the good were alike sanctified in her affections, and she regarded the spirit of conjugal love not otherwise than debased by the smallest participation in any second faculty of the moral sense; in truth, the best woman in the world, was not perhaps the best wife for a man who would fain persuade himself, that "Turnspit angels trod the world for him;!" She loved indeed, but far from wisely; and as therefore poor Howard was not likely to encounter any wholesome questionings from his wife, he never gave himself the trouble of looking a little deeper for them, in his own reflections. He regarded the fortunes of the present moment, whatever they might be, as a thing apart-unresulting of the past and uninductive of the future--life itself, he but surveyed through the narrow aperture of the single day, the gone and the coming, darkened alike. They were a pair indeed, constitutionally formed to illustrate a social and intellectual bathos-the one railing at fortune, against whom, in fact he was the great aggressor, and the other mistaking the untrained fondness of a child for the cultivated plant of conjugal love. It may well be supposed that a family which knew not how to improve the common advantages of life, were scarcely calculated to make the best struggle under positive impediments, still less to endure, without considerable detriment to their scanty means, a constant and usurious tax upon them, by any of the privileged order-for such, unhappily, was the case. This predatory friend, in more senses than one, was a distant relation, except when either whim or caprice induced him to shorten the intervening span, and then no claim of blood could be closer. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Howard could be fairly chargeable as fortune-hunters, yet their supine submission to a long course of consanguineous invasion, had encouraged the good neighbourhood to give them unlimited credit to this amount. The extortions of this aged marauder were neither graciously pursued. nor graciously enjoyed, for to express an obligation is akin to repayment, which of all things, your imprimatur cum privilegio carefully eschews. He will demand a favour at the most inconvenient time-he will suggest a change in his kinsman's ménage, when the quarter's dividend is running taper; he will watch the maturity of some domestic project, before he avows that of all things it is his most ill-fated aversion. The practice of his whole life is an implied contract some day to balance the account, but implied it may remain to the end of all things, for his death happens about three weeks after he has led his laundress, Florence O'Drainly, to church, who performs most spiritually all the Irish obsequies on that mortal occasion. Old Mr. Dowgate, a rich, flinty miser, occupied a large, half-furnished house, some few miles in the country, but "business" frequently calling him to the metropolis, at no place could he so consistently, fix his lodging for the time being, as the, home of Sophia, his own cousin's daughter. For twelve years he had never exhibited the slightest evidence of fickleness in this respect, during which period, he had been the guest of one only hotel, and that the Howard Arms! and as his April.-VOL. LVIII. NO. CCXXXII. 2 H hostess never ventured to offer him an invitation for any particular time, lest it might bear the imputation he was not welcome at all, so did the old gentleman deem any notice of his arrival, a ceremony thrown away on people whose circumstances did not warrant appliances so much the immunities of the wealthy. At about six o'clock, on the evening of the 17th of November, 18-, a hackney-coach laboriously drew up to the house in which Howard resided. The heavy descent of a pair of thick wooden shoes on the pavement, indicated the driver already on his feet, and a half-sober knock completed the evidence of some most unbidden visiter in Mortimerstreet, Oxford-road. Caroline was the first to speak, and clasping her hands in unfeigned distress, exclaimed, "Oh! papa, 'tis cousin Dowgate!" The fact was, the family had this evening despatched a hasty dinner, and were about to take their departure for Covent-garden Theatre. The comedy of " All's well that ends well," was the play announced; and Howard, at that moment, in one of his happiest humours, was repeating with much animation, sundry passages of "Parolles," and showing how Congreve had artfully moulded him in some of his own creations, when the illusion was invaded-the spell broken! Already were the wheezy and querulous accents of cousin Dowgate heard in the passage, which with great impartiality he was bestowing equally on the affrighted maid, and frozen coachman-on the one for her delay, and on the other for his demand. And now, with that studied avoidance of ceremony, which sometimes the more clearly betrays the very purpose it labours to disguise, he abruptly entered the room. Ill-concealed surprise, or perhaps, better assumed respect, had occasioned the family party to rise, but their visiter manifesting no other inclination to the conventional salutations of a first meeting, than though he had quitted the room only ten minutes before, with his hat pressed over his eyes, and a large paper bundle under his arm, growled, or gurgitated out, "Eh-how ?— what's this-fire almost out. Eh! young lady!" which speech, by the direction of his offuscate eyes, might probably have been intended for Caroline. Poor girl! the tears were already starting in hers, for the play was verily brought to an abrupt conclusion, and a sorry entertainment to conclude. "Indeed, Mr. Dowgate," observed the lady of the house; "had we been aware of your intended visit, you would have found us better prepared to receive you; but I trust we shall be more comfortable presently." Whatever annoyance Mrs. Howard might have felt, it was altogether on her husband's account, for she was one of the sweetest women in the world, bearing, in many respects, a strong resemblance to Mrs. Booth, though I fear she had not quite the understanding of "Amelia." Howard, who was in fact nearly as ready to cry as Caroline herself, with corrugate brow now consigned Parolles to the "shelf" (where I have reason to believe he has been suffered to remain from that day to this), and not without some effort, added, "Mr. Dowgate will of course dine, my love-so pray give your directions accordingly;" but the said Mr. Dowgate having about an equal contempt for receiving as giving civilities, saw no sufficient rea |