edy
raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly
indifferent. Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems
convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage
decency or is unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a beggar
in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify a
laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or what the
world calls low. He sees that many things which the world looks down
upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world contemns; 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