[Gutenberg 44806] • Portraits of Children of the Mobility

Portraits of Children of The Mobility by Percival Leigh

The Mobility are a variety of the human race, otherwise designated, in polite society, as "The Lower Orders," "The Inferior Classes," "The Rabble," "The Populace,"

"The Vulgar," or "The Common People." Among political philosophers, and promulgators of Useful Knowledge, they are known as "The People," "The Many," "The Masses," "The Millions." By persons of less refinement, they are termed "The Riff-raff," and "The Tag-rag-and-bobtail." Figuratively, they are also denominated "The Many-headed;" although in England, in common with the other members of the body politic, they have but one head. May it be long before that one is replaced by another! In some foreign countries, as in America, they change their head very often; and in a neighbouring kingdom (where they are called "The Canaille"), their head is, strange to say, their target.

We write solely for the benefit of the superior classes, that is to say, of the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, and so many of the Public in general as will condescend to patronise our work. These individuals, if we may so call them, inhabiting a different sphere from that of the Mobility, are not (with the exception, of course, of the Magistracy and the Clergy,) in the habit of meeting them; some account, therefore, of this little-known class, introductory to an exhibition of their offspring, may be reasonably expected of us. Our gentle readers, we apprehend, have but little regarded the Mobility in passing through our public thoroughfares. When employed in taking the air, they move in a loftier line than that of the pavement, and, occupied with the momentous cares of the Senate, the Opera, and the Ball, are too deeply absorbed in meditation to cast their eyes below.

The Mobility are the antipodes to the Nobility: the one race of men being at the top of the world, the other at the bottom of it. The word Mobility is said to be derived from the Latin term Mobilis, fickle, or moveable; as Nobility is from Nobilis, noble. But what can be more fickle than fashion, what more vulgar than constancy? The heads of society, too, are quite as moveable as its tails. The Nobility are continually in motion; moving in good company, moving in Parliament, moving about the world. If we are to take up the Mobility as vagrants, we must set down the Nobility as tourists; * if the former are moved by Punch and Shakspere, the latter are equally so by Rubini and Bellini. There are some who think that Mobility comes from Mobble, to dress inelegantly; a surmise more ingenious than correct. The humbler classes were perhaps originally named, as in former times they were governed, by arbitrary power. As to an opinion that the opposite term, Nobility, is derived from Nob, a word which in the vocabulary of certain persons signifies head, we only mention it to show the horrid ideas of etymology which some minds are capable of forming.