XIV. 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 military 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. We trust the justices, at the present day, in our land, are quite unlike the fox-hunting squires of Fielding's time, illiterate and coarse-minded. That race is well nigh extinct; we have known judges of the most opposite character to this ;* yet we fear a spice of the old leaven remains, in the shape of a bullying, cowardly, tyrannical, fawning servitor of the law. What a luminary is an honorable Senator! Individually, in remote places, he merges the reputation of an entire district in his own person. We once knew a specimen of this race, who came nearer to our idea of an universal genius (according to the received idea of that character) than anyone we ever met. This Crichton was, a few years ago, and bearing all these blushing honors, at one and the same time, Major-General and State Senator, a speculative and thriving practical farmer and gardener, an expert mechanic, One noble instance we could point to, if it did not appear boastful, of a just judge and most able lawyer combined: who might have sat on the same bench with a Hale or a Holt, and who would have reflected as much honor as he gained from the association. Such men are most rare. a man of the world, a lively talker, a capital mimic, and parlor vocalist. He was, to conclude, a pleasant and hospitable host, and a kind neighbor, to boot. To be sure, he was no scholar, could hardly write an ordinary letter, nor speak for five minutes, with precision, on any political question. Of law he knew almost nothing, though a member of the Court of Errors (a common case) and of political philosophy he knew less. How, then, did he arrive at such distinction what gifts had he? a bright eye, a good voice, a pleasant address. He was, and is, a shrewd fellow, a good lobby member, and, as a partizan, it was neck or nothing with him. Safely do we sketch this portrait-for not only is the original quite unknown to the public, but with his innate vanity it will remain as unknown to, and unrecognized by, himself; and besides, in most particulars, the character is not that of an individual so much as of a very large class, whose name is legion: NOT the Legion of Honor. men. 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 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 beef-eater, 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. And the constable-what a hateful retailer of so-called justice, the most farcical burlesque upon the primal virtue existing, were he not one of the most contemptible specimens of cunning, treachery, corruption and insolence. We speak of the class. He is better styled (as in Swift and Rabelais) the catchpole (would he might be served like the shrewd gentleman in the latter author), and his office ranks the very lowest in point of social morality, and in the political scale. He is the companion of the vilest: often one of the number, temporarily reprieved as a sort of state's evidence: having to assume an air of honesty, or to connive at profitable roguery, as may be most expedient or most profitable. The police increase crime, by fostering the early indications of depravity; by suspicion, that often verifies its own prophecy; and by the rigorous punishment of small offences, always productive of ill effects, and only tending to stimulate the taste for crime, and exciting a spirit of revenge. They live by it, and keep up the demand for their services, like the rat-catcher in one of Hannah More's tales, who left, at every house where he took any of those vermin, at least one pair, to preserve the race. We forgot when we spoke of the policemen as holding the lowest office : there is one still viler, yet more sublime in its hatefulness, its ugliness-one, no honest, no humane, no Christian man, can hold: one, that in some countries is so prescribed (odious in all), that the executioner is obliged to flee when he has executed his office; and in Switzerland, so disgraceful is it esteemed, that it is forced, hereditarily, on one family, who are outlawed, in effect, if not in fact an office that public opinion, in our country, justly revolts at from its connexion with the most frightful of all punishments: the office of the Hangman. : To leave such reflections as these, which are somewhat out of place here in a gossiping way, 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 incorruptible 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 |