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    uttermost dregs ; she has maintained a dignified attitude ; and she is supported by an enthusiastic population eager for the punishment of an insolent invader . Immediate war , therefore , possesses but few terrors for the Crescent , whilst a protracted military attitude during a period wasted in fruitless and insincere negotiation , is fraught with proximate destruction . Russia and Austria cannot but be aware of the

    natural policy of the Western powers in the event of actual hostilities ; that policy consists in fighting those countries with their own discontented subjects . Poland , Finland , Hungary , Italy , the Caucasus , and Georgia present ' a catalogue of imposing populations , dissatisfied with their rulers , and eager , nay burning , for an opportunity to throw off the * yoke that weighs so heavily upon them . Persia and Turkey , in conjunction with the Caucasus , could play a brilliant part upon the Caspian and Black seas . To the north Russia has nothing but enemies , and towards

    Europe the populations constituting her motley Empire writhe under her oppressive exactions . That Austria will join Russia in the event of war appears almost certain , although the blindness and folly of so suicidal a policy is perfectly apparent to all but those who are most deeply concerned . But Austria , with Hungary and Italy revolutionised , is nearly , if not quite , powerless . It is Prussia alone that would throw a decided preponderance into the despotic scale , and apart from the facts that Prussia has long-past Russian aggressions to avenge , her policy and her very existence

    have derived their strength from hostility to Austria . If we were to commence by announcing this to be a war of principles , we should certainly have all the despotic powers for enemies . In the course of a war , however , we must avail ourselves of every principle at hand . But our Governing Classes would never dare to enter into calculations such as these , for when liberal nations are directed by men whose lives have been one long barren sympathy with absolutist powers , neither courage against injustice , nor honour as opposed to despotism , can be expected at their hands .

    The poisonous Greek Empire notion should be earnestly discouraged by every true lover of freedom and justice : for , apart from the fact that the Greeks are thoroughly incapable and corrupt , and that their Government is a feeble caricature of absolutism , with all its evils intensified on a petty scale , the Greeks are notoriously inclined towards Russia . The establishment , if possible , and it is not , of a weak and divided

    Greek Empire , and it must inevitably be both , would conduce to nothing but the ultimate sovereignty of the Czar over the entire country now occupied by Turkey in Europe , by Greece , and by the Grecian Archipelago . It is , in fact , a Russian as well as a Greek idea , ami is supported by both parties . The great gun , indeed , of both these parties is laboured misrepresentation of the Turkish Government . The ameliorations which

    have confessedly rendered Turkey one of the most tolerant countries of Europe are misrepresented , denied , or treated as fables , notwithstanding the testimony of all intelligent travellers and the dicta of statesmen . The various churches , the various religious communities , not merely tolerated by the Porte , but protected , all go for nothing . Austria , forsooth , is tolerant , and Russia civilized . Alpha .

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    THE GOVERNING CLASSES . No . V . THK KARL OF CARLISLE . Tub career of the Earl of Carlisle is in exquisite consonance with the motto of bis house : " Volo non Valeo ;' ' and he is one of the most popular men in this country because of the Volo , despite the non Valeo . To bo n Peer of the Realm , with all the blood of alf the Howards in our veins , given one an enormous advantage in the cultivation of an

    ambition to please ; and one m auro at least of tl » o triumph accorded to . the good intention . . 'Hut the reward is given us much iu pity an in acknowledgment ; and if one fails , there is the more pity , because of the rank from which one lias descended to the degradation of Booking popularity . "All the blood of all the Howards " cannot ennoble note , or fools , or eowardu ; but to have all the blood of all the Howards is still an advantage if ono would consent to confine omc ' h pretensions to that . Rohan , who would not

    deign to be a prince , and who couldn't be a king , but was still proud of being Rohan , was a sensible fellow ; he knew the certain advantage , and was . resolute on keeping it , and on not risking it by competitions . And , at any rate , Rohan never thought of competitions downwards . The manners of a century may modify the bravados of " blood . " In our day , Montalembert is lecturing at the Institute , and the last of our Plantagenets is Chairman of the London-. Und

    North Western Railway Board . Rohan , therefore , might , in this day , consent to be a savant , or philosopher , or a millionaire , and a Howard may not necessarily betray his caste if he enters into lecture-room lists with Mr . Gough , Mr . Silk Buckingham , or Dr . Lardner . He may not necessarily degrade himself and his order—that is , if he succeed . But if he does not succeed—if only a lecturer among lords , not a lord among lecturers , then he is a failure as a Howard , whose pretensions he has abdicated , and he is a mediocrity as an orator Gough .

    If our aristocracy were real and substantial , and felt itself safe , it would be still exclusive , defiant , self-reliant . But because it suspects that it is a delusion , and a shaky one , it descends from its upper atmosphere , and attempts the vulgar contentions of a struggling community . Our feudal barons were proud of being unable to read or write ; their function on earth was not the clerk ' s function . The descendants of our feudal barons

    ( descendants , but not issue ) seem to consider that they have no functions , and the } ' - attempt to demonstrate right to the first place by—being as clever as small litterateurs . That they quite mistake their position is perfectly clear , since no one can have properly studied , this country without perceiving that it willingly permits the classes who own the land to govern the realm . The Howards and Russells —the aristocracyexist by implied capacity for government , and they ruin themselves and their caste by destroying their prestige—by elaborate proofs that they are

    only mediocrities . To the philosophic , thentendency to compete with the chance talents of society suggests tbeir uneasiness in a false position , in which they do not sufficiently rely on the thorough baseness of British kind vaguely loving lords . On the crowd they force the thought that if a lord is inferior to Mr . Gough , Mr . Gough , perhaps , should not be added to the ferae naturae ^ as an attraction at the Surrey Zoological Gardens temperance fetes , and that , on the other band , the Earl de Trop , K . G . B ., has no right to look so enormously wise , comprehensive , contemptuous , and grand .

    The crowd is , on this point , slow of conviction . Since they discovered that Robert Boyle , because he was the brother of the Earl of Cork , was the father of chemistry , they have always magnified the merits of-nobles who have attempted a justification of their titular nobility . Coaxed into suicide with such encouragement , the present generation of lords and ladies are busy in the effort to illustrate an artistic , literary , and scientific century : and the result is , the complete condemnation of the aristocracy of this enlightened country . No argument will bo used here to suggest that all

    men of genius are the sons of tinkers—the majority of successes in English literature having been the successes of well-born , well-bred , gentlemen But the consecutive disasters of literary nobles are at once appalling and ludicrous ; and , failing in books , they call in question their right to be the governing class , a right which otherwise the governed clasH would not call in question ! There are able men who cannot write books , because to write a book requires a special training , and n professional knack : but the man who , not wanting bread , writes books which are not good books , supplies absolute proof that , he is a man who , mediocre in literature , would be mediocre in

    everything . Richelieu would have coine down to us as a man of genius if he had not written idiotic tragedies—all the more idiotic that he was advanced in . ago and power , when he sat down to bo an author ; and Lord John RuhhcII might , in his manhood , inspire awe among h » B countrymen , but , that earlier iu life lie wrote a play that was damned , and a history which circulated all over Europe—as trunk lining . Pygmalion ' s statue ( it in a pity she didn ' t koep a diary ) wan , no doubt , mi absurd and a common-place female , even in the eyes of Pygmalion , nftor she ceased to be a Mtutuc . Peers who descend from their pedestals , run ju . st the risk of turning out vulgar and gtupid ,

    like the majority of the classes into which they have condescendingly intruded . Byron was only a lord by an accident ; and his genius only proves the rule , to the discredit of his order—as Wellington in another direction . It may be a question if . there has been even in politics a great man among the peers— -peers by birth—since the king-maker's time ; but what will not for a moment be contested , is , that there has not been a clever literary lord ( with Byron ' s exception ) since Chesterfield ' s time . Certainly , as lecturers and litterateurs , they are terrible mediocrities in our day . Lord Mahon stands first ; . and he is about as clever and as profound among historians , as Mr . Macfarlane or Miss Strickland . Lord John

    Manners is first among the poets of the peerage and , perhaps , in the whole course of human affairs no man ever indited such imbecility as has been printed under the name of Lord John Manners . Need the list be lengthened ? What is to be said of an " order" of which Lord John Manners , Lord William Lennox , Lord Ellesmere are the most illustrious literary ornaments ? To mention all the noble authors would require careful catalogueing of the peerage . They all travel these men ; and write ; and they are all neglected ' the women ; and write . And not only do they not obtain great , they do not obtain moderate successes . The class has not produced one original veritable , book .

    Lord Carlisle , a man of impressionable nature , and sure to be the victim of circumstances , has followed the fashion of his class , and has been both the literary man and the lecturer . Like other lords who have gone down among the multitude to talk grammatically and simulate sympathy , he has been well received , and has attained , after twenty years canvassing , something like a position of '" popularity . " For that he has worked very hard ;—sustained in the acting of the necessary part by the conviction that , thus , he was bringing the arietocraey en rapport , with the democracy , —in a word , it is the policy of the

    whigs , —that he was saving his order , which was never in danger . In this way Lord Carlisle has been thrown out as a tirailleur by the great Whig families ; and lie has skirmished with the people , in lecture-rooms and at public dinners , with considerable success . To give him , in the lectureroom and the public banquet-room , the greater weight , the high Whig families have accorded him Rome subordinate offices of Government ; made him Secretary for Ireland , because he-has just the character to " " a restive but barbarous race ; and Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster , because that is an office which would leave time to

    coquet with the democracy . But his metier has been , not in the cabinet , but in the crowded and odorous balls , where the enlightened but not perfumed democracy collect , savage for first principles and enthusiastic for peers . Beautiful are the orations which Lord Carlisle then delivers . Precisely of that cultivated calibre of mind which finds its expression graceful and facile , Lord Carlisle , well prepared , pours out the most exquisitely sonorous speeches , the modulation perfect , the manner artistic . The sentences are often neatly , epigrammatically cut , —his Lordship reads a good deal : — the whole style is elegant , p leasant , impressive . There is no speaker more successful ' . is

    an audience , even a well-educated audience , wrapt in listening to him ; and he is cheered L » peer—and grammatical !] nearly as warmly as Mr . Gough is cheered by the enlightened Bntoiw whose real passion for sentiment is prcierabio to gin . But what does Lord Carlisle say ? *¦ " *™ heard and read many columns from Lord Carlisle , but 1 haven't much idea what Lord Carlisle cvci says . He Hays , generally speaking , that "uma ^ nature i » a wonderful and most mysterious tm » fc >

    that it is good to be good , that smells in J ° ^ ought to l ) e got rid of , that juvenile oflen < iei » would not be criminals if they were ChristiMn , that the houI of man expands under free »» " .. u tutional Government , that Roman Catholics wo bft bettor Liberal * if they wore lens Tones , imji " » Powo i . s an author worth reading , l nnf 18 ' imm-OHHiou X have of Lord Carlinle ' H nocial , poiii cal and literary philosophy ; and it is mil » " *» » and these line generalities , which it is ho handso m in a poor to concede , toll bolter on the and cnc ^ he liken than the most analytical or : rational _ toric . Ho acquires , thus , the reputation of » " »» a liberal man , a generous -minded innn , V , true H ,, rt of nobleman , sir . " And ho ho « « JjJjj » man , and a gemtiouH-urindert man . lAH } \ t IX has talked lnmself , and has been cheere d into ,

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    974 % ' THE LEADEB . [ Saturday ^

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1853, page 974, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2007/page/14/