It is extremely enhancing and interesting to hear two political younger gentlemen, of various opinions, talk about some great question across a dinner-table; corresponding to, whether, if the general public have been admitted to Westminster Abbey for nothing, they’d or would not convey small chisels and hammers of their pockets, and instantly set about chipping all of the noses off the statues; or whether or not, if they once got into the Tower for a shilling, they wouldn’t insist upon attempting the crown on their own heads, and loading and firing off all of the small arms in the armoury, to the nice discomposure of Whitechapel and the Minories. Upon these, and many different momentous questions which agitate the public thoughts in these determined days, they’ll discourse with great vehemence and irritation for a considerable time collectively, each leaving off precisely where they started, and each completely persuaded that he has bought the better of the other. If the political younger gentleman be a Radical, he’s usually a really profound particular person indeed, having nice retailer of theoretical questions to put to you, with an infinite number of attainable instances and logical deductions therefrom.
The entire coronary heart and soul of the army younger gentleman are concentrated in his favorite topic. We have made it a practice since, to take the Horse Guards in our daily walk, and we discover it is the customized of army younger gentlemen to plant themselves reverse the sentries, and contemplate them at leisure, in intervals varying from fifteen minutes to fifty, and averaging twenty-5. We’ve sometimes thought that this phenomenon might take its rise in the typical behaviour of captains and colonels and different gentlemen in purple coats on the stage, where they are invariably represented as high-quality swaggering fellows, talking of nothing however charming women, their king and nation, their honour, and their debts, and crowing over the inferior classes of the community, whom they often deal with with a little bit gentlemanly swindling, no much less to the development and pleasure of the viewers, than to the satisfaction and approval of the selection spirits who consort with them. These young gentlemen may be divided into two classes-younger gentlemen who are literally within the military, and young gentlemen who, having an intense and enthusiastic admiration for all things appertaining to a army life, are compelled by hostile fortune or antagonistic relations to put on out their existence in some ignoble counting-home.
We have been suggesting to a army young gentleman only the other day, after he had associated to us several dazzling situations of the profusion of half-a-dozen honourable ensign somebodies or nobodies within the articles of child gloves and polished boots, that possibly ‘cracked’ regiments would be an improvement upon ‘crack,’ as being a more expressive and acceptable designation, when he suddenly interrupted us by pulling out his watch, and observing that he should hurry off to the Park in a cab, or he would be too late to listen to the band play. Mrs. Nixon has a tolerably intensive circle of female acquaintance, being a superb-humoured, talkative, bustling little body, and to the unmarried ladies among them she is consistently vaunting the virtues of her son, hinting that she will likely be a very comfortable person who wins him, however that they should mind their P’s and Q’s, for he may be very particular, and terribly extreme upon young ladies.
Should you add different girls into her thoughts by continually displaying your interest in them then finally she’s going to see you as a jerk who shouldn’t be interested by just her but somewhat every girl who walks this planet. See how the flaxen-haired young gentleman with the weak legs-he who has his pocket-handkerchief thrust into the breast of his coat-glares upon the fainthearted civilians who linger to look upon his glory; how the next young gentleman elevates his head in the air, and majestically places his arms a-kimbo, whereas the third stands along with his legs very wide apart, and clasps his arms behind him. If a fight takes place in a populous town, through which many noses are damaged, and some windows, the younger gentleman throws down the newspaper with a triumphant air, and exclaims, ‘Here’s your valuable people! Then he is exceedingly properly versed in all doctrines of political financial system as laid down within the newspapers, and knows an incredible many parliamentary speeches by heart; nay, he has a small stock of aphorisms, none of them exceeding a couple of lines in size, which is able to settle the toughest query and go away you nothing to say.
