, 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 apparently were 'either be a dirty
scoundrel or starve'? One thing, however, is certain, which is, that
Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for what is low had
been his ruling passion he certainly would have done; consequently, he
refuses to do one thing which no genteel person would willingly do, even
as he does many things which every genteel person would gladly do, for
example speaks Italian, rides on horseback, associates with a fashionable
young man, dines with a rich genius, et cetera. Yet--and it cannot be
minced--he and gentility with regard to many things are at strange
divergency; he shrinks from many things at which gentility placidly hums
a tune, or approvingly simpers, and does some things at which gentility
positively sinks. He will not run into debt for clothes or lodgings,
which he might do without any scandal t