nobility and gentility of the "Blue Book," the "Court Guide," the "Army,
Navy, and Law Lists, for 1841."

Wondrous and kindred arts! The sculptor wrests the rugged block from the
rocky ribs of his mother earth;--the tailor clips the implicated "_long
hogs_"[1] from the prolific backs of the living mutton;--the toothless
saw, plied by an unweayring hand, prepares the stubborn mass for the
chisel's tracery;--the loom, animated by steam (that gigantic child of
Wallsend and water), twists and twines the unctuous and pliant fleece into
the silky Saxony.

[1] The first growth of wool.

The sculptor, seated in his _studio_, throws loose the reins of his
imagination, and, conjuring up some perfect ideality, seeks to impress the
beautiful illusion on the rude and undigested mass before him. The tailor
spreads out, upon his ample board, the happy broadcloth; his eyes scan the
"measured proportions of his client," and, with mystic power, guides the
obedient pipe-clay into the graceful diagram of a perfect gentleman. The
sculptor, with all the patient perseverance of genius, conscious of the
greatness of its object, chips, and chips, and chips, from day to day; and
as the stone quickens at each touch, he glows with all the pride of the
creative Prometheus, mingled with the gentler ecstacies of paternal love.
The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and perfect faith in the gentility
and solvency of his "client," snips, and snips, and snips, until the
"superfine" grows, with each abscission, into the first style of elegance
and fashion, and the excited schneider feels himself "every inch a king,"
his shop a herald's college, and every brown paper pattern garnishing its
walls, an escutcheon of gentility.