4> EXCURSIONS IN MADEIRA 



combined superiority of character, talent, and education was 

 exerted in their behalf, and for their real good. There are many 

 men who are loth to sacrifice the refinements of intellect and taste, 

 the very barriers of society, to political changes, better in principle, 

 but bearing very little on themselves in immediate effect ; and they 

 wisely prefer to be slighted and treated with hauteur in the world 

 by an ignorant nobility, to being invaded in their retirement by 

 the boisterous impertinence and coarse equality of an unruly 

 mob. The younger members of the present legislative party 

 should endeavour to outvie their noble predecessors in every 

 virtuous refinement, in the classic purity of their language, in the 

 elegance of their private pursuits, in the polish of their manners, 

 in the taste, though not the splendour of their entertainments, 

 nay even in the fashion of their dress, if they would reconcile the 

 nobility to a generous cause, and, by removing their present reason- 

 able apprehensions, avail themselves of so desirable an aid in re- 

 modelling the government. Tliis would be to benefit the country, 

 and to do more than justify themselves. The word gentleman, 

 however, is not understood in France or in Portugal, perhaps not 

 on the continent ; there it implies nobility, with vis it means a man 

 of honour and education, who, however high or low his birth may 

 be, dares not do that for which the vulgar stand excused; who is 

 admissible to all society, who can command satisfaction from, and 

 appeals to the first nobles of the land, not as a nobleman but a 

 gentleman, and always finds that noble as jealous, and as proud of 

 the title, as himself. This is the only sort of levelling, if it can be 

 called so, tolerated by thinking men ; and it is to this perhaps that 

 the Enghsh character owes its high reputation: certain it is, that 

 our country owes to it much of her real glory, for this one 

 feeling has created energies unknown on the continent. 



I had scarcely finished my extracts from the different despatches, 

 instructions, and reports, received and forwarded by the Governors 



