SOCIETY AND PERSONAL.

Evening Star, Issue 3122, 20 February 1873, Page 3

SOCIETY AND PERSONAL.

The Daily Nsm asserts that “gentility,” to which Lord Salisbury casually alluded in his admirable speech at Manchester the other day works far more mischief in I nglish society than any combination of strikes or rise of food to famine prices. If we could get any trustworthy statistics on such a subject, we should learn, how many thousands of families there are in London who are endeavoring to keep up a state altogether out of proportion to thoir means, and who are from time to time plunged into the deepest distress by some unexpected call on their confined resources. This disastrous pretentiousness does not stop here. It prevails in other regions. The son of the workman must be a shopkeeper; the son of the shopkeeper must be a merchant’s clerk ; the son of the merchant’s clerk must be educated for the law, or medicine, or the Church; and they miist in the meantime assume the social position and expenditure necessary to the character, and incur the most severe privations for the of a wtak and foolish pretence. No one, of course, can desire to check the ambition of ardent youth. But the impulse which drives people into efforts to distinguish themselves or better their circumstances is vastly different from that petty hypocrisy which loves to “keep up appearances,’ and ape a style of living altogether beyond its means. That is one of the great curses of our time ; and it is hard to see how it is to be remedied, accept by a growing spirit of goo I sense and honesty on the part of our population generally. The example of noblemen sending their sons into commerce is all very good in its way ; but it cannot be expected to affect the conduct of men who consider a clerkship and eighty pounds a year as more “ genteel than a carpenter’s bench and three pounds a week; or of women who, administering an income of two hundred a year, would think themselves degraded if they' assisted in the cooking, and studied the small economics of the kitchen. If we had a little less gentility” and a trifle more thrifty, prudent, and plain ordering of limited means our »>cial life in England would be a good deal more comfortable and praiseworthy than it

For the amusement of onr readers, wo copy ths following, which appeared recently in the Echo :-To“ have one's hair fmz;d to the sound of soft music is a pleasure reserved forthe ladies who frequent the splendid salons of a new itahlmemcnt de coiffure in Pans. Par away he the days when the * Barber of Seville,” or of any other city, was a person to be treated with penile irony. Hair-cut-ting in Paris has mounted beyond the regions of an art, it has almost become a science. Its vo 1 aries assemble in vast and magnificent rooms, to which they are introduced by lacqueys in rich liverys, and where they are attended by tbe most “ distinguishcd artists” with “irreproachable terns able to speak all the languages of Europe. While the gentle operation of tonsure, the brushing and the perfuming are >n process, a mysterious pmsic is bcaul pervading the apartments. Geuth men’s beards are softly shaved by razors of “ velvet electricity the next thing, of course, to “buttered lightning”—with the aid of soap, winch is, in truth, the honey of Arabia, dissolved in the dewdrops of dawn. Ladies, meanwhile, Lave their locks frizzed as by an HSohan breeze—which maybe either “stormy” or “calm,” as suits their temperament and style of bead dress. Surely we are in s* world of exquisite novelties! Dnly one thing m the progromme recalls the barbarous days of old. The ladies are promised not only “ delicate attentions” from their attendants, also “ the moat spiritudle conversation !