Chapter IX.

O Thou divine Spirit, that through England burnest in every breast, inciting each with the sublime desire to be fine! ²⁷² that stirrest up the great to become little in order to seem greater, and that makest a Duchess woo insult for a voucher! ²⁷³ Thou that delightest in so many shapes, multi-various, yet the same; Spirit that makest the high despicable, and the Lord meaner than his valet! equally great whether thou cheatest a friend, or cuttest ²⁷⁴ a father! lackering all thou touchest with a bright vulgarity, that thy votaries imagine to be gold! – thou that sendest the few to fashionable balls and the many to fashionable novels; – that smitest even Genius as well as Folly, making the favourites of the former boast an acquaintance they have not with the Graces ²⁷⁵ of a mushroom Peerage, ²⁷⁶ rather than the knowledge they have of the Muses of an eternal Helicon! ²⁷⁷ – thou that leavest in the great ocean of our manners no dry spot for the foot of Independence; – that pallest on the jaded eye with a moving and girdling panorama of daubed vilenesses, and fritterest away the souls of free-born Britons into a powder smaller than the angels which dance in myriads on a pin’s point. ²⁷⁸ Spirit! divine Spirit! carriest thou not beneath the mantle of frivolity a mighty and sharp sword, and by turning into contempt, while thou affectest to display, ‘the solemn plausibilities of the world,’ ^{* hastenest thou not to the great family of man the epoch of redemption? Whether, O Spirit! thou callest thyself Fashion, or Ton, 280 or Ambition, or Vanity, or Cringing, or Cant, or any title equally lofty and sublime – would, that from thy wings we could gain but a single plume! Fain would we, in fitting strain, describe the festivities of that memorable day, when the benevolent Lord Mauleverer received and blessed the admiring universe of Bath!}