Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation, difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships:  that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who, successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques, coteries, and conversaziones, and all the littleness of inferior fry:  that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should live for and with such men alone.

But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of pseudo talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town?  Ass, dolt, miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious fools?  Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter’s bench, the schoolmaster’s desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged cheat?  Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and claqueurs, and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts.  Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:—­Time misspent, industry misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently applied:  poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!

True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no social pre-eminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life.  In this, as in all other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of themselves:  they are individually admired, not worshipped as a congregation:  their social influence is not aggregated, though their public influence may be.  When a man, of whatever class, leaves his closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms:  the scholar, the man of rank, the politician, the millionaire, must merge in the gentleman:  if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or submitted to any where else.