Jews, male and female, forsake the synagogue for the
sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the Jew to take up with
an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess
with a musician of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant
of Captain Mulligan. With respect to the gypsies,
it is making the women what they never were before--harlots;
and the men what they never were before—careless
fathers and husbands. It has made the daughter
of Ursula the chaste take up with the base drummer
of a wild-beast show. It makes Gorgiko Brown,
the gypsy man, leave his tent and his old wife, of
an evening, and thrust himself into society which
could well dispense with him. “Brother,”
said Mr. Petulengro to the Romany Rye, after telling
him many things connected with the decadence of gypsyism,
“there is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face
as black as a tea-kettle, wishes to be mistaken for
a Christian tradesman; he goes into the parlour of
a third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum and
water, and attempts to enter into conversation with
the company about politics and business; the company
flout him and give him the cold shoulder, or perhaps
complain to the landlord, who comes and asks him what
business he has in the parlour, telling him if he
wants to drink to go into the tap-room, and perhaps
collars him and kicks him out, provided he refuses
to move.” With respect to the Quakers,
it makes the young people like the young Jews, crazy
after gentility diversions, worship, marriages, or
connections, and makes old Pease do what it makes
Gorgiko Brown do, thrust himself into society which
could well dispense with him, and out of which he is
not kicked, because unlike the gypsy he is not poor.
The writer would say much more on these points, but
want of room prevents him; he must therefore request
the reader to have patience until he can lay before
the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating,
to be entitled “Remarks on the strikingly similar
Effects which a Love for Gentility has produced, and
is producing, amongst Jews, Gypsies, and Quakers.”
The Priest in the book has much to say on the subject
of this gentility-nonsense; no person can possibly
despise it more thoroughly than that very remarkable
individual seems to do, yet he hails its prevalence
with pleasure, knowing the benefits which will result
from it to the church of which he is the sneering slave.
“The English are mad after gentility,”
says he; “well, all the better for us; their
religion for a long time past has been a plain and
simple one, and consequently by no means genteel; they’ll
quit it for ours, which is the perfection of what
they admire; with which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred
abbots, Gothic abbeys, long-drawn aisles, golden
censers, incense, et cetera, are connected; nothing,
or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed
in the balance against gentility, where will Christianity
be? why, kicking against the beam—ho! ho!”
And in connection with the gentility-nonsense, he