34 An Attack upon I he Clubs ! UAN. 



this notable exception that they do not appropriate one pound, one 

 shilling nay, not one farthing of their surplus revenues to charitable 

 purposes ? When, in our rides and drives around London, we behold 

 the numerous and munificent endowments of the City-companies for the 

 support of the poor and aged, we willingly overlook the waste and was- 

 sailing in the hall : but what benevolent foundations what doles to the 

 poor what assistance to any one portion of the whole . human race, 

 except French cooks and pampered menials, emanate from the palaces 

 of club-gluttony at the west end of the town ; or what single good of 

 any sort can be urged, as a set-off against their manifest and manifold 

 evils ? I pause for a reply. 



Would the individual who refused to associate with any but the 

 partners of his own establishment, or the brethren of his own guild, be 

 deemed a polite companionable person or a shy, sullen, reserved, unamia- 

 ble churl ? Certainly the latter ; and as a modern professional or exclu- 

 sive club is but a collection of such individuals, it must of course deserve 

 a similar character. Its union of one class is a separation from all 

 others ; the junction of its members is a dismemberment from the gene- 

 ral body of citizens ; it is dissocial in its very association. It is a cabal, 

 a caste, a clique, a coterie, a junto, a conspiracy, a knot, a pack, a tiche, 

 a gang ; any thing, in short, that is close, sullen, selfish, disjunctive, and 

 inhospitable : but if there be in such narrow fellowship, any single ele- 

 ment of sociability, why then the monks who planted their convents in 

 the desert of the Thebaid, were sociable beings, and useful members of 

 society. Goldsmith very properly condemns the man of talent, 



who narrowed his mind, 



And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 



But as a profession is still narrower than a party, so is it still more 

 culpable to withdraw from our fellow- creatures, in order to sequestrate 

 with so paltry a band. There may be an esprit de corps in such herding ; 

 but there is no spirit of philanthropy no spirit of humanism. He who 

 sympathizes with the community at large, rather than with a particular 

 class, must surely be the most valuable member of society the most 

 useful subject the best-informed and pleasantest companion the most 

 in accordance with the general spirit of the age, which points with a 

 steady and resolute hand at the abolition of all invidious distinctions and 

 classifications ; whereas these hateful clubs tend to perpetuate separa- 

 tions, and to establish the most odious and contemptible of all aristocra- 

 cies that of the purse and of the stomach. Degradation of head and 

 heart must be the inevitable result of this gastronomical mockery. The 

 esprit de corps or corporate attachment that it produces, is not so much 

 the love of one body of men, as the hatred of all others. What collision, 

 what comparison, what enlargement of mind can be expected from the 

 intercourse of persons, all of whom have been similarly educated, and 

 from their youth upwards have been devoted to the same pursuit ? If 

 the constant inter-communion of those " whose talk is of bullocks" 

 stamps them with a character of indelible rusticity ; if the vulgarians, 

 confined to the narrow civic circle, wear a notorious brand of cockney- 

 ism, how can we expect that a convent of fellow-professors shall escape 

 without a congenial stigma of shallow pedantry, technicality, and club- 

 bism ? No they will only confirm one another in all the little paltry 

 prejudices and peculiarities ; there will be no beneficial friction with the 

 world at large to rub off the angles and asperities of character ; and as 



