[ 260 ] [MARCH, 



THE SHORTEST ROAD TO DISTINCTION. 



Sheridan, Sen. What in the name of nonsense, Tom, can induce you to take the trouble to go down 

 into a coal-pit ? 



Sheridan, Jtm. Why, I want to go, merely for the sake of saying that I've been in one. 



Shivid&H, Sen. Oh ! there can be no objection to your saying you have been in a coal-pit but why 

 not say so at once ? 



Sheridan's Domestic Dialogues. 



ONE is really tired of being asked sixty times an hour, " What's in a 

 name ?" and of answering, as every body but Romeo would, " every 

 thing." It is time that the interrogatory be forbidden and abolished, 

 or the conversazione of life will become little more than a monotonous 

 cross-examination. One thing I have ever observed, that those who 

 are most ready to put the question, and to insinuate that a tiger would 

 be just as terrible if he were called a tortoise, a fool as contemptible if 

 he were pronounced a philosopher, or a houri as poetical if designated a 

 hippopotamus, are invariably the very first to be influenced by a name ; 

 and to regard things as black or white, not according to their respective 

 complexions, but according as they happen to have been christened by 

 those sage godfathers and godmothers, the lexicographers of old. 



Now I do not pretend to be wiser than these people, except that I 

 feel and confess the influence, which they feel and deny. 1 acknow- 

 ledge the pomp and circumstance of a name, and admit its acquisition to 

 be the 'be-all and the end-all of the art and mystery of walking triumph- 

 antly through the world. The art itself, as commonly practised in 

 society, may be a black art but it is not called so ; and I, therefore, 

 consider it to be of the purest and most spotless description. Whatever 

 the world calls proper,, I regard as perfection ; whatever it styles base, 

 I denounce as despicable. Well, says the reader, and so does every- 

 body. Yes, but everybody does not make confession of the faith that 

 is in him. On the contrary, everybody pretends to differ with the 

 world in each particular, while in his heart and his actions he agrees 

 with it to the last item of its creed ; and everybody affects to dissent 

 from everybody else, at the very instant that he acts upon their argu- 

 ments, and plunges into the path where, in the sight of all men, he had 

 just written up, " No thoroughfare." 



I lay claim, then, to no other merit than that of acknowledging my 

 reverence for the rules of society, my devotion to its decrees, and the 

 servile submission so universally offered, though, as I have said, so sel- 

 dom owned, at its shrine. Whenever I see a " treatise" upon some- 

 thing, or an "inquiry" concerning nothing, announced by an F.R.S., an 

 M.R.I.A., or any other great alphabetarian in the world of knowledge, 

 I immediately set it down as a production of vast genius and erudition. 

 When I see an astronomer, like Sir James South, created a knight, I 

 instantly perceive that the " stars" of the various orders to which he 

 may aspire, must have quickened his calculations regarding the heavenly 

 bodies surprisingly ; and I place him at once on a footing with Newton 

 (Sir James sounding as well as Sir Isaac), and far, very far above Tyco 

 Braye (who was never called Sir Tyco Braye). When I look at a pic- 

 ture by the President of a Royal Academy, I pronounce it, of course, 

 to be the best picture in the exhibition ; and when I go to the theatre, 

 and see an inferior singer playing the best part in the opera, I consider 

 myself to be mistaken and that, simply from sustaining the leading 



