And for the poorest class, who that has seen it can ever
forget the hardly human horror, the abjection and uncivilizedness of
Glasgow?
What a strange religion, then, is our religion of inequality! Romance
often helps a religion to hold its ground, and romance is good in its
way; but ours is not even a romantic religion. No doubt our aristocracy
is an object of very strong public interest. The _Times_ itself bestows
a leading article by way of epithalamium on the Duke of Norfolk's
marriage. And those journals of a new type, full of talent, and which
interest me particularly because they seem as if they were written by
the young lion[485] of our youth,--the young lion grown mellow and, as
the French say, _viveur_, arrived at his full and ripe knowledge of the
world, and minded to enjoy the smooth evening of his days,--those
journals, in the main a sort of social gazette of the aristocracy, are
apparently not read by that class only which they most concern, but are
read with great avidity by other classes also.
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