XXX. TITLES. WE Americans have been ridiculed for our extravagant admiration of titles, with more of justice than most of us are at all willing to allow. Notwithstanding our republican spirit, in government and political rights, we still, as a nation, entertain a vast respect for forms, ceremonies, honors, grave respects. The most laughable part of the matter, too, is found in the fact, that a people characteristically pacific, both from inclination and policy, should affect such a violent attachment for military titles, with all the pomp and insignia of war. Every petty mechanic may become, and often is, a captain or major. Your host at the tavern is colonel: the blacksmith of the village, perhaps a general-sometimes a GREENE. The persons holding these offices are frequently among the mildest of men, probably so timid as to run, in actual conflict, at the report of artillery. Our city and country militia would hardly stand before a disciplined army-save and excepting always, in a defensive national war, and then cowards would be converted into heroes. We do not speak of such an emergency, but refer to the soldierly character of our people. A mere soldier of fortune fights equally well, or ill, everywhere, under every government; but Americans are soldiers from necessity, and at home. There they would act like brave men, as they always have done. English writers have noticed this mock heroic trait in our people; but they have not remarked that the admiration for titles is as common in the line of civil as of nilitary life. We are equally open to satire on that side, also. A judge of a county court is with us a great man; and, indeed, a judgeship is generally the mark of a country gentleman's ambition. One of our Presidents, after filling the highest office, became the justice of one of the Virginia county courts. The thirst for office and titular distinctions is not, however, confined to the country. At a charter election, what a rivalry for the petty offices of the wards. Irving, in his satire on the Dutch burgomaster and schepens, has painted with exact fidelity, our contemporary aldermen and their assistants. These are the smallest in general of our little great men. What a turkey-cock is a true alderman of this class! not the official performing his regular duties, and carefully watching the interests and comfort of his ward, but the mere beefeater, the pursy, swelling, pompous ignoramus. Elected by those who have some design upon his pockets, or at least his patronage; consorting with his kind, and thinking with them, he has nothing to do but to eat rich dinners (at the almshouse for sick and poor) and talk in an imperative. style, the autocrat of the side walks, of the church where he attends, for a comfortable nap of a summer's afternoon, of the tradesmen he deigns to employ, and of the barber's shop, where he is first shaved in the morning, and reads all the papers through, keeping a shop full waiting, while he toils through the advertisements. The terror of beggars and of petty criminals, hard-hearted, a usurer, a rigorous landlord, without any bowels of mercy. To leave such reflections as these, which are somewhat out of place here in a gossiping essay, a strong objection to the employment of titles is the very inadequate character they bear. The Right Honorable gentleman may be, and often. ought to be, called a most dishonorable traitor. The Reverend brother is not always deserving of reverence, nor the learned advocate always a model of legal attainments. These titles and epithets are, for the most part, unmeaning, and often savor of downright irony. By a title is often implied much more than is actually meant; and like the bishop's lawn, the marshal's truncheon, and the judge's ermine, are considered the correlatives of piety, courage, and incoruptible integrity. Yet they afford, in general, merely the substitutes for those qualities. Titles are worshipped by "the great vulgar and the small," who are in the habit of taking the name for the thing. To carry any weight with it, a title should infer some particular merit, as the valor of a hero, or the wisdom of a counsellor. It should have the effect of a judicious epithet: sometimes a sublime description, as in the list of titles of the Saviour of mankind. It should serve as a designation. But what mean the titles of courts? The "Grace," for instance, of a duke, or an archbishop; or the "Serenity” of a petty German prince. They can be borne by good and bad men, indiscriminately. be earned; the reward of merit is worthless, conferred as an act of favor. Artificial rank can be created. Nature only can form the true nobleman. Kings, we are told, can make or unmake, princes or lords, who may flourish or may fade; The true title must "But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, Or, as Burns nobly sings: A prince can mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; The noblest of titles, gentleman, not the artificial designation, but the highest perfection of the manly character, cannot be created by letters patent. He must be born one, with a clear head, a warm heart, a noble will, and a gentle soul, invincible by fortune or circumstance. Thus averse, among his other genuine traits of manhood, is the true gentleman to all titular distinctions; whose character Dekkar has finely drawn in a passage descriptive of the perfect character of the Divine word. "The first of men that e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever lived." The gentleman and the Christian knight are here one, as they always should be, united in the same character. Yet how unlike the ordinary notion of a spirited, showy gallant, or overbearing aristocrat. Man, simply, is a sufficiently lofty title: a true man is the first of created beings. One of Shakspeare's characters nobly says: "I tell thee, sirrah, I write man, to which title no age can bring thee." Neither, we may add, can any amount of wealth, degree of power, extent of ability, or elevation of office, if the heart and soul be wanting. The admiration of titles is something childish, and pertaining to a state of barbarism. The names and singular appellations borne by our native Indians, as well as by the savage tribes of other countries, illustrate this position, and are more worthy of attention, from their real meaning, than the family crests of civilized nations, at the present day, with all the trumpery of the Heralds' College. The facility of obtaining certain titles, from literary institutions, and the ordinary academic degrees, has taken off the edge of novelty, and rendered them very commonplace dignities. You find as many doctors of divinity as of medicine, and masters of arts abound almost as much as simple bachelors. In most instances, the titles are sadly misapplied. The teachers are learners, and the masters mere tyros. Almost as great a farce as college degrees-we speak it sub rosa-are the degrees of masonry, the sublime degree of this, and the incomprehensible degree of that. Now-a-days, they do read absurdly, to be sure, in a Masonic Register, the names of honest, plain mechanics, as High-Priests, Grand Kings, Scribes and Sojourners-Sir John Johnson of such an encampment, Right Worshipful of such a chapter, &c. One respectable sexton we find a High Priest, and the same office sustained by a noted political ballad singer. Speculative masonry, a benevolent and prudential system, in its origin, fitly and impressively exhibited by figures and symbols, affords, abstractedly and in practice, a wise and striking commentary on the Christian morality. But the multitude of signs, and the grave burlesque of (the reported) ceremonies, no less than the number, names and functions of several of the officers, have a tendency to degrade into ridicule what was most praiseworthy in its first intention. The violent contrast between the ordinary civil occupations, and the elevated titles of the Masonic Dignitaries, is the cause of the comic effect produced on hearing them recited. It is like making Sancho Governor of Barataria, or dubbing poor Saltonstall Duke of Rigmarole. We are apt to look upon many titles as mere nicknames, intended by way of satirical jest upon pretension and affectation: often a serious joke, imperceptible to the party most concerned in extinguishing it. To modern sceptics, the high-flown style of addressing certain of the scholastic doctors was of this nature; they were uniformly irrefragable, sublime, invincible, celestial. |