Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

From the Monitor
SELECT APHORISMS
AND
REFLECTIONS.
Query.-- What is honor ?
It is much to be regretted that the answer to a question which ought forever to be plain, should like that for gentility, have become complex and obscure from any cause --yet such is now the fact, at least in Europe.
Originally there, as we hope the fact may yet be here, a man depended on his own conduct for his honorable rank, but now an emperor or a king, can make a right honorable duke, or a lord, of the Lord knows who! and the rank, however deserved, descends from father to son. This is like saying a blind man must see because his father had eyes, or that a royal stamp on base metal could make it pure gold. Before the word honor was abused, it commanded a just esteem and an universal respect for the virtuous integrity and indubitable worthiness of the wearer of this once noble appendage to rank; but now, it often means any thing, or perhaps nothing, at least in Europe ; for there, if two fashionable persons meet, one may say to the other, " upon my honor sir, you will do me great honor by permitting me to wait upon your honor," &c. while in truth both parties detest, and wish each other in purgatory.
Ah! "But who ever heard of any thing like this in America? If in a crowd, at an opera in Paris or London, you by mere accident should tread on the toe of a man of fashion, in the honest simplicity of your American heart you might be tempted to apologise for the injury Sir you must not do such thing-you are gone if you do-you must fight, if you wish to make friends, the only way of giving his very dear fashionable friend the only satisfaction of honor is by killing him in a honorable duel. This honorable termination of the whole affair is also considered well and honorably mixed. Such are the gallant shocking effects of extreme civilization that we may yet be able to imitate perhaps due in the course of things as old many enlightened world but to avoid education America as we may yet be able to select the good and to reject the bad at pleasure : let us do so and we may flourish forever.
Perhaps military honor is much the same in Europe, as it is with us.
Glory, pay and patriotism, are the incentives, and the profession yet involves many of the noble embellishments of that golden age of chivalry the 13th century, of the skill and bravery of which we have our share.
Dr. Johnson says, that among these mechanics, he that can temper iron best obtains the highest honor, and he shrewdly asks if this rule of honor was generally extended to utility only, as the test, in lieu of present fashionable notions, how many ducal titles to precedence, and how many false pretenders to respect, would fall to the ground? And now to return to the question of what is honor ? In America it is now sir, what it once was in the old world; it is to be just in all your dealings to be social, charitable and patriotic in due obedience to the varied calls of your country, and to do your best to hand down unimpaired the means for the blessings you enjoy to grateful posterity, to the number of what you had better contribute, if you can. Honorable matrimony the most honorable institution of the universe.