prizes much which the world condemns; he sees
that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises
much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really
excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he
learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian,
which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the
tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the
college-hall. If he learns smithery, he also learns--ah! what does he
learn to set against smithery?--the law? No; he does not learn the law,
which, by the way, is not very genteel. Swimming? Yes, he learns to
swim. Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world--at least the
genteel part of it--acts very wisely in setting its face against it; for
to swim you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look
without his clothes? Come, he learns horsemanship; a very genteel
accomplishment, which every genteel person would gladly possess, though
not all genteel people do.

Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh,
the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with
Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If
he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no
objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that
he prizes a thing or a person because they are ungenteel? That he is not
ready to take up with everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when
he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the
thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively
ungenteel. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero
did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its
ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the writer
is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he
admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an over-regard for
gentility, which prevented the hero from accepting, when on the brink of
starvation, an ungenteel though lucrative office, an office which, the
writer begs leave to observe, many a person with a great regard for
gentility, and no particular regard for principle, would in a similar
strait have accepted; for when did a mere love for gentility keep a
person from being a dirty scoundrel, when the alternatives were