University of Virginia Library

A LETTER FROM TOWN.

Shakspeare.

The Spectator.

Same

My Dear Friend,

When I left you and the country, for the city, I
promised to send you a portion of what I might gather
up here in the course of my walks, business, and
visitings; and I now take the first odd moment of
composure that I have been blessed with since reaching
this bustling city. I say — of composure; for
though I am naturally of a steady disposition, as you
well know, you can hardly conceive what a whirligig
town-life makes of a plain country-gentleman, like
myself. Where I see that men have a clear apprehension
of their motives to action, it never jars
the even motions of my mind, however varied and
great the action around me may be; and for the very
simple reason, I suppose, that wherever there is a
main, distinct purpose, there must be conducive order,
however complicated and rapid the movements. But

where men are kept in a perpetual spin-round from a
mere accidental and hurried touch-and-go meeting
with one another, I myself, sky, earth, and all
upon it, get into a whirl, and I find myself fast undergoing
the general metamorphosis, and becoming, like
every one around me, a humming-top. Yes, my dear
friend, you have heard a great deal about the city,
and about its inhabitants; — they are all humming-tops:
And the best of it is, they are all humming
one another. But as I have just spun out my turn,
and am, at present, lying still on my side, I will endeavour
to do as those do who think to make amends
for spending the greater part of life in a round of folly,
by being wise and moralizing for the little time they
are in their senses.

You were a great reader of Doctor Johnson, in
your younger days; and though you quarrelled with
many of his criticisms, you were less qualified in your
admiration of that great man, I believe, than you are
at this day. I cannot say that time has had the same
abating influence respecting him upon me. He is no
less frequently in my thoughts, than formerly. To
this circumstance you must consider yourself indebted
for the subject of the present letter, and thank the
Doctor for whatever may please you in it; for I
seldom think of him, without calling to mind his love
of an inn; it is one of the best-natured traits in his
character.

There certainly is no place in the world where a man
feels so independent and easy, and so inclined to take
clear comfort. It is equally well fitted to nearly all sorts
of characters. The blackguard goes to it to lord it over
his own gang, put the host in good humour, have full
swing amongst the grooms and waiters, and sharpen

his wits upon the comers-in. He visits it nightly, as
much for his improvement in his calling, as for his
pleasure; and goes home as satisfied when he has
done well, as those who have finished more serious
duties with duller heads. The humorist may have
his own way there, and the surly man keep his corner,
and pass himself off for one of grave taciturnity; in
short, no where else can so various and opposite dispositions
herd together, with so little annoyance to
each other.

It is the world in little. Men of all sizes, complexions,
and callings, are as close stowed as beasts
at a cattle-show, and give as good opportunity to observe
their points and varieties. Here are to be met
with, politicians, who never had place or pension,
with plans to keep order without law — beaux in rusty
hats, and coats white in the shoulders — gray-headed
midshipmen who could “sink a navy” — Laputa
philosophers — hen-pecked husbands, venting their
lungs and spiriting up their courage — quiet, staid
bachelors, who eat and drink by weight and measure,
and sleep by the clock — the dapper gentleman,
whose unsoiled suit has been as long known as the
wearer, fresh and smooth as a lady's-man — and your
swaggerer, always dirty, and always rude. Besides
these, and many more in contrast, come the fillers-up
of society, your ordinary men, with differences so
faintly marked that it is quite a science, and an ill-paid
one, to trace them out.

One who wishes to study his fellow-men may do it
here and save himself a deal of travel. He has nothing
to do but to take his seat snugly in a corner, and
look and listen, and now and then throw in a remark
in way of suggestion, just to see what it will come to.—

Out of all doubt, it is a situation best fitted to that
sort of men who keep about in society for the sole
purpose of speculating upon human nature. Here
they find every one off his guard; and they themselves
are not kept back by the restraints of ceremony.

One of these observers will enter a room of motley
company, with a grave, downward aspect, and pace
it to and fro with a measured step, as if lost in abstraction,
or busy about some embarrassing circumstance.
If you watch him narrowly, you will presently catch
his eye scaling along over the group of talkers you
are standing amongst, as if he were taking note of
each one in the circle.

I dined out to-day, and told our old friend, Thomson,
I would meet him at the tavern, that he might
take me to his club more conveniently. It was a raw
evening after a warm day, a time, of all others, when
a fire is most cheering. Each one drew near the inn
fire with open hands; and rubbing them together in a
kind of self-congratulatory way, with a working of the
shoulders, and a backward throw of the head, was
prepared for a set-to at a long talk upon whatever
was going.

I was sitting in an old round-a-bout which stood
in one corner, waiting the coming of my friend, without
taking any part in the conversation, when a person
like one I have just before described, walked
slowly into the room. He was past the middle age,
and his tailor was probably as old as himself, for his
dark drab coat was of the fashion of some twenty
years back. There was a staidness in his manner, as
much out of fashion as the cut of his clothes, but suiting
well with the strong sagacity of his countenance.
The nose and the lines from it expressed sarcasm,

which was tempered, however, by a playful good-nature
about the lips; and his eyes had that look of
inward contemplation, which makes the finest eyes in
the world. For the most part, there was a rich haze
over them; but when they turned their notice outward,
they sent forth rays, like the sun bursting through
a mist.

The expression of his eyes and mouth made me observe
him more closely, and with a good degree of
interest. For it is not often that we meet with men
who pass much of their time in society, only because
of a certain talent at discriminating and observing,
who have not hard, self-pleased countenances, showing
a sort of merry-making out of the weaknesses of
our kind, which no good man can take a share in.
Yet they make smooth way through the world. It
is ten to one that he whom they next meet with is
glad of a laugh, though at another's cost; beside,
that he feels safe and in favour while under the wing
of one of these world-wits. They know full well that
few men are brave enough to go to war with ridicule,
and that as few will put themselves at risk for a general
principle.

An habitual, close observation of the customs,
manners, and characters of society, will beget in even
the best men a relish for the ridiculous. It is past
question that a common-sense man, who stands by
and sees how much folly is wrapt snugly up in ceremony
— how much pretence covers indifference, and
how far, even among the knowing, the conventional
passes current for the true —must have a scorn of the
foppery with which the plain fact of life is so fantastically
tricked out.

He, then, who has lived long among men as a

looker-on, and has kept his exhorting from turning to
irony, and his earnestness to indifference, has given a
thousand fold better proof of sound principle and a thoroughly
good heart, than he who, in a fancied benevolence
while apart from the world, sees nothing but the
growth of virtue, and exalts himself in lauding his species.
Even a little taunting of the world may go with a
right love of it; and he may be humble under his own
vices who rebukes another's; else who would be our
censors but the unkind, or our teachers but the proud?
In a benevolent heart, our very frailties beget an
anxiety which quickens and fills out the growth of the
affections; and the keen sighted to our faults are not
those who love us least, or are most blind to our
virtues.

These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind
while I was looking upon the shrewd, sarcastic, benevolent
face before me. The honest owner of it
soon saw that I was observing him; and whether it
was that he perceived any expression in mine that
pleased him, or that he was inclined to sift me, I
cannot tell, (I rather think there was a sympathy
between us;) after traversing the room once or
twice more, he made his way next to me into the circle.
Taking up the poker, and passing it between
the bars in the same deliberate manner as Vicar
Primrose did, when about upsetting his daughters'
washes — “What companionable, talkative creatures
a brisk fire makes folks of a dull day,” said he. This
was spoken in that low tone, and half soliloquizing
manner, in which one utters himself, who wishes to
bring on a conversation with his next neighbour, yet
does not feel at liberty to do it by way of direct address,
and, so, throws out a remark for him to take
up or not, as he pleases.

“Yes,” I replied, turning toward the fire, too;
“they cluster together with spirits as much astir, as
flies on the sunny side of a tree, of a frosty morning.”

Putting down the poker and straightening himself
up, he looked at me with a sociable expression of
face, as if we understood each other perfectly well;
and drawing a chair into the circle, said, as he set
himself down by me, — “You are from the country,
Sir, I presume?”

“I am so. I come to town, now and then, to see
an old friend, and to give my faculties a jog in the
crowd.”

“Two very good reasons,” he remarked. “And
may I ask, without being impertinent, whether you
have two more as good for making the country your
home?”

“I prefer the country, inasmuch as a man sees
there less of the frivolities of his species, and more of
nature, than in town, and stands a better chance to
have a more equable temper, and a more independent
turn of mind.”

“True,” he answered. “The flies you just now
spoke of will never let a man into their little vanities,
impertinencies, and enmities, however long he may
stand, feeling his heart fill with gladness and good-will,
while looking on so much of the enjoyment which
God gives to all creatures.”

“That is from no want of honesty in them,” said
I. “They would not lie to us, could we understand
their language. They do not keep two characters on
hand, the one bad, the other good, like a man with
his home coat and another for visiting. I could be
tolerably well content with the world, bad as it is,
would men but show themselves a little more plainly.”

“The difficulty in knowing men,” he replied, “arises
not only from a design in them to deceive us, but also
from a proneness to deceive themselves. Now, look
you round,” said he, with a half good-natured, half
sarcastic smile, as he gave a side-glance at the company,
“upon any dozen of men you may happen
amongst, and it is odds but you will find that ten of
them have been all their lives industriously making
up for themselves false characters, have thrown away
what belonged to them, and might have done good
service, to put on that which perhaps was well enough
in itself, but has become fantastical and absurd, because
it fits ill and is out of place. This lost labour
is sometimes from self-ignorance, but as often, to be
sure, from want of thorough honesty. The best of us
begin with cheating the world more or less, and end,
for the most part, our own dupes.”

“The world is perpetually struggling against nature,”
said I. “Who stops to consider, that individual
peculiarities of mind and manner are not to be
changed, without making an inconsistency of the
parts taken together?”

“You are right,” he answered. “Every man has,
by nature, his peculiar manner, and certain modes of
expression, and motions of the body proper to himself.
No one is, perhaps, free from little awkwardnesses,
as they are called, of one kind or another. Now,
though these are not well in themselves, yet, considered
in their relations, there is a fitness in them
which makes them even agreeable to a discerning
man. They are, in general, in harmony with the
structure of the body, but, what is better, they are
so many honest indications of a man's mind and disposition,
which are continually coming from him, and

laying his character open to us, without his observing
them. They are, in some sort, a part of the very constitution
of the being they belong to, and so intimately
connected with his thoughts and feelings, that he will
find it hard to rid himself of them without injuring the
mind itself. He will be instantly put into a forced
state by so doing, carrying on a double operation,
and working under rule, for life. For, after all, he
will never be able to make it to himself so much a
habit, as to forget his fashion of doing a thing, in his
concern for what he does. In this way, he will for
ever be putting teasing checks upon the free play of
his ordinary feelings, and breaking up the simple
movements of his impulses. And, so, he will lose
his credit with the world even for the little sincerity
that he has left to himself, and fail, in the end, of his
effect, from his too great anxiety about it. My
dear sir,” said he abruptly, “did you, for instance,
ever see a perfectly graceful speaker, as the ladies
would call him, without being heartily tired of him
after twice or thrice hearing him?”

“No,” answered I; “your elegant speakers are
very much like your Blair writers; there is no fault
to find with them, only that we are soon weary of
them both.”

“They always affect me in the same way,” he replied.
“Nor can I call to mind a man who has made
himself felt after being heard many times, who, either
from the too frequent repetition of some gesture proper
enough in itself, perhaps, or from some very odd
one, has not set all rules of gesticulation at defiance.
The most stirring speaker I ever heard was remarkable
for a very singular motion of the hand; yet it
was natural to him, and always produced an effect;

and I never remember it without a kind of delight,
and free from any thing of the ludicrous. A man
should take care how he new-models his manner; for
unless he is peculiarly fortunate, the chance is that
he will cast off what we could very well put up with,
fancying to himself that he is about delighting us
with what, in truth, we shall never tolerate: A bad
natural manner is bad enough, but a bad artificial one
is abominable.”

“There are certain ungainly tricks of the body,”
I replied, “generally, however, proceeding from an
embarrassed mind; but the worst of them never make
a man half so ridiculous, as is the awkward man who
puts himself to school to the graces. The most remarkable
thing about the latter will be a stiff sort of
motion, aiming at ease, and a clumsy endeavour after
elegance. There are others, of a happy temperament
and a suppleness of the body, who undertake to refine
upon what nature has done for them, and, so, part
with that which made every one pleased and at home,
not knowing why, to take up with obtrusive graces
and impertinent grimace; and, thus, they turn their
manners into forms and dresses, instead of leaving
them the mere representatives of a polite, well-ordered
mind.”

“Very true,” said my new acquaintance; “and if
the mind is well improved, and right feelings brought
forward, what we call the manners will take care of
themselves. Make it a child's main principle to love
the truth and always hold to it, and he will have an
open and manly decision of manner, which will clear
his way for him wherever he goes. Give him a tasteful
mind, and there will be beautiful emanations from
it playing about him, even on ordinary occasions.

Teach him that selfishness defeats its own purposes,
and makes the most polite sometimes vulgar; that in
common intercourse he is to be more mindful of
others than of himself, that he is not to press hard
his own tastes and opinions, till they give uneasiness;
that it is best to find out the bent of another's feelings,
and not cross it, except where it is at variance with
the truth; that he is rather to talk upon what his companions
are familiar with, than unfeelingly to parade
before their ignorance a show of what he himself
knows; that, unless some occasion calls for it, he is not
to keep ahead of those he is with, instead of walking
by their side; that his principal object should be to
produce a good and happy state of things wherever
he goes, and that in this way he will make sure his
own satisfying enjoyments, without the mortifying
sense of a selfish aim — and you will do more, upon
these few, simple principles, to make a thorough gentleman,
than all the pedantry of polite education, than
all the outside endeavours of the professors and scholars
of elegant accomplishments could ever teach or
comprehend.”

This may sound a little climacteric to you, my dear
friend; but coming from a thoughtful man, past middle
life, who had not lost his feelings with his hairs, it
took hold of me from its simple earnestness; and more
so, as I marked in his face the play of his feelings
growing stronger and quicker as he went on, and a
flush of excitement spreading gradually over his pale
countenance.

He paused and looked down for a moment, as if
sensible that his zeal had led him into something like
an harangue, and to take more to himself than a well-bred
man should ordinarily do, especially when with a

stranger. The feeling and delicate embarrassment of
his manner moved me a good deal, particularly when I
considered that it was shown toward one younger than
himself.

More to relieve him, than from any wish to talk,
(for I had much rather have listened to him,) I began
saying something about the tiresome sameness of what
is called high life in a city. He raised his head a
little, and turning toward me with a smile, looked at
me as if he thanked me. This put me off again from
what I was about remarking, and I was never more
glad in my life, than when I saw my friend, Thomson,
coming in at the door to relieve me from my uneasy
sensations. There was something very delightful in
them too, notwithstanding; and when my friend introduced
me to the stranger as an old and particular
acquaintance of his, and I took his extended hand, we
were better known to each other, than most of those
who have lived next door neighbours for some dozen
years.

It was quite time to join the club. My new acquaintance,
Mr. Thornton, turning out to be a member
as well as my friend, we walked in sociably
together.

In my next, I hope to send you some account of
the club; though this is quite uncertain, as the spirit
of order bears as little rule over me at present as it
does over the place I am in; besides, I may meet with
something, if not more worthy of your attention, more
amusing, perhaps.

Yours,
A. B.