ing is more startling than the contrast between the
heavy, formal, lifeless slang of the man-about-town and the light,
living, and flexible slang of the coster. The talk of the upper strata
of the educated classes is about the most shapeless, aimless, and
hopeless literary product that the world has ever seen. Clearly in this,
again, the upper classes have degenerated. We have ample evidence that
the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain
natural symbolism and eloquence that they had not gained from books.
When Cyrano de Bergerac, in Rostand's play, throws doubts on the reality
of Christian's dulness and lack of culture, the latter replies:

'Bah! on trouve des mots quand on monte a l'assaut;
Oui, j'ai un certain esprit facile et militaire;'

and these two lines sum up a truth about the old oligarchs. They could
not write three legible letters, but they could sometimes speak
literature. Douglas, when he hurled the heart of Bruce in front of him
in his last battle, cried out, 'Pass first, great heart, as thou wert
ever wont.' A Spanish nobleman, when commanded by the King to receive a
high-placed and notorious traitor, said: 'I will receive him in all
obedience, and burn down my house afterwards.' This is literature
without culture; it is the speech of men convinced that they have to
assert proudly the poetry of life.

Anyone, however, who should seek for such pearls in the conversation of
a young man of modern Belgravia would have much sorrow in his life. It
is not only impossible for aristocrats to assert proudly the poetry of
life; it is more impossible for them than for anyone else. It is
positively considered vulgar for a nobleman to boast of his ancient
name, which is, when one comes to think of it, the only rational object
of his existence. If a man in the street proclaimed, with rude feudal
rhetoric, that he was the Earl of Doncaster, he would be arrested as a
lunatic; but if it were discovered that he really was the Earl of
Doncaster, he would simply be cut as a cad. No poetical prose must be
expected from Earls as a class. The fashionable slang is hardly even a
language; it is like the formless cries of animals, dimly indicating
certain broad, well-understood states of mind. 'Bored,' 'cut up,'
'jolly,' 'rotten,' and so on, are like the words of some tribe of
savages whose vocabulary has only twenty of them. If a man of fashion
wished to protest against some solecism in another ma