Etiquette of the Past.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 152, 24 December 1903, Page 15

Etiquette of the Past.

m> < To the eighteenth century belong tho most delightful works on manners ever written. For what are the Spectator, tho Tatler, and tho Guardian but the most charming of all commentaries on the cuatoms, modes, foibles, of the most attractive age in history? AildLwn, tho gontlo censor, the serene moralist, the easiest, gentlest, courtliest writer of any time or country almost, sit* in judgment, half grave, half gay, on the manners of the day. With him \m round-faced Sir Richard Stcele, who wrote ugainst Drunkenness in that paper of hia from the strong vantage-ground of a largo personal experience, ana 'who had not the lew a spirit most kindly and gentie, and a reverence for goodness and purity too rare. All tho folliew of the women and tho conceits of the men came before that tribunal. The Distended Petticoat, tl»e coy little Hood, the Long Sword, Complalaahce in Converaution, the difference) between a Fine Gentleman, a Pretty Fellow, und a Beau, Snuff -Tnking, Raffling* Shops, the Tucker abandoned and tha Blecve roiled to show the whitest necks and the fairest anna in tho world, Coun try Etiquette, Simplicity of Ornament— a thousand things. No picture of the times Is piore complete. It vi the very trivialities which mnke it so lifo-like. And with all ito details it presents a broader and nobler conception pf the Art of Manners than had ever been drawn before it. It is Steelo who is the tlrab to assure the Fair that one may have "a nimble pair of heels, a full-bottomed wig, a laced shirt, an embroidered fluit, ana a pair of fringed gloves," with a soul little, vulgar, mean. "A finished gentleman Is perhaps one of the most uncommon of all the great characters In life," he adds with a sigh. He sketches Tom Courtly : "I, who know him, can tell within half an aero how much land one man has more than another by Tom's bow to him. Titlo is all he knowa of honour, and civility of friendship." Thoso hist worms might have beon taken as a motto for Lord CheAteruehi'u Letters. Yet oven that celebrated Kiiquuttc Book hn« unconsciously pleaded the cause of better modes nnd mntuls than any my Lord knew of. For the hfo I of the writer wan the finest argumont ! ngainut hi* writing— and he wns thnt most salutary of examples, the Ifumbuj? Found Out. Was it only old Samuel ■Tnlinsdn who scornfully dismieaed those u)o careful bows and smirks as "the truinimrs of a danoing-moster!" There mu*t i have been a host of leeetr men who cc-

c tinuitrd them as justly. "It would bo ill-bred to tell people that ona ceas Is through thorn ; and thercforo they llnt- % Ut themselves that they uio not seen c through," says Horace Wulpole. So Uotwe went on inviting Clioster/iekl Io g bicakfust at Strawberry Hill, and tpoko f at' tho Lettem as having "reduced tlio f folly And worthlessness of the world to a i i tvguhir Hyßtom." Wero old Sarah Minir, liorough «iul my Lady Mary Worlley t Montagu taken in by my Lord's oxqui.ss Ito oblißeanco, flattery, «,avoir-faire ? Not quo whit. Tho&* qualities bought for him, after ywirs of patient cringing, the "cold civility" of hi» master Gcorgo II. ; and the bitter hatred of that better man than tho King — Caroline tho Queen. w The Letters wero published ut last out t of aplto to damn my Lord's character; and did it so effectually that ho has come down to posterity as tho perfect picturo of a finished fraud, and, what ho 1 would have thought fai* worse, as a nsj marknblo proof of that shrewd saying t that "to be agreeable one must not bo too i agroeuble," There was a pause in the literature of • Etiquette when Lord Chesterfield hud f gone- where to be "shining aud showish" 1 can avail man no more. J Tho euro of the behaviour patieed aoon f from the bands of men into the hands i of women ; and aerioua aunta wero long f busy in damning ns inconvenablo all the » occupations by which the Young Person , might possibly become a happiness to r other poopjp, and something less than a misery to herself. , To-day, Etiquette is a very neglected 1 quantity. The world either at laat knows t manners, or does not want, to know them. 3 Or has found out that good breeding is b not to be acquired through books, nor r courtesy through many rules. Tho latter- - day Krnstus may even havo guessed that : in the long run it is ua euro uu death and j fate that he will appear to wise and sim- > pie, to great and littlo, exactly what ho , is. And in tho long run it will b<* found j with him, as with all men, that tho only manners which ore not idle arc "tho fruit ' of loyal nature and of noble mind." i — S. Q. Tallcntyro, iv Harper's.