if children are treated as men are, no indig nity is offered, and they have nothing to complain of. Your own sense will assure you upon the whole, that society cannot subsist, nor any business go forward, without subordination and the experience of all ages will teach you, when you come to be better acquainted with it, that the dissolution of authority is the dissolution of society. In the mean time, consider the wisdom and happiness which is found among a swarm of bees; a pattern to all human societies. There is perfect allegiance, perfect subordination: no time is lost in disputing or questioning; but business goes forward with chearfulness at every opportunity, and the great object is the common interest. All are armed for defence and ready for work; so that in every member of the community, the two characters of the soldier and the labourer are united. If you look to the fruit of this wise œconomy, you find a store of honey for them to feed upon, when the summer is past, and the days of labour are finished. Such, I hope, will be the fruit of your studies.

LETTER

LETTER II.

ON GOOD MANNERS.

PROPRIETY of behaviour in company is necessary to every gentleman: for without good manners he can neither be acceptable to his friends, nor agreeable in conversation to strangers.

The three sources of ill manners are pride, ill nature, and want of sense; so that every person who is already endowed with humility, good nature, and good sense, will learn good manners with little or no teaching.

A writer, who had great knowledge of mankind, has defined good manners as the art of making those people easy with whom we converse; and his definition cannot be mended. The ill qualities above-mentioned, all tend naturally to make people uneasy. Pride assumes all the conversation to itself, and makes the company insignificant. Ill-nature makes offensive reflections; and folly makes no distinction of persons and occasions. Good manners are therefore in part negative: let but a sensible person refrain from pride and

ill-nature, and his conversation will give satisfaction.

But

So far as good manners are positive, and related to good breeding, there are many established forms, which are to be learned by experience and conversation in the world. there is one plain rule, worth all the rest added together; that a person who pretends to the character and behaviour of a gentleman, should do every thing with gentleness; with an easy, quiet, friendly manner, which doubles the value of every word and action. A forward, noisy, importunate, overbearing way of talking, is the very quintessence of ill breeding and hasty contradiction, unseasonable interruption of persons in their discourse, especially of elders or superiors, loud laughter, winkings, grimaces, and affected contortions of the body, are not only of low extraction in themselves, but are the natural symptoms of self-sufficiency and impudence.

It is a sign of great ignorance to talk much to other people, of things in which they have no interest; and to be speaking familiarly by name of distant persons, to those who have no knowledge of them. It shews that the ideas are comprehended within a very narrow sphere, and that the memory has but few objects.

If

If you speak of any thing remarkable in its way, many inconsiderable people have a practice of telling you something of the same kind, which they think much more remarkable. If any person in the company is commended for what they do, they will be instantly telling you of somebody else whom they know, who does it much better: and thus a modest person, who meant to entertain, is disappointed and confounded by another's rudeness. True gentility, when improved by good sense, avoids every appearance of self-importance; and polite humility takes every opportunity of giving importance to the company: of which it may be truly said, as it was of worldly wealth, it is better to give than to receive. In our commerce with mankind, we are always to consider, that their affairs are of more concern to them than our's are; and we should treat them on this principle; unless we are occasionally questioned, and directed to ourselves by the turn of the conversation. Discretion will always fix on some subject in which the company have a common share. Talk not of music to a physician, nor of medicine to a fidler; unless the fidler should be sick, and the physician at a concert. He that speaks only of such subjects as are familiar to himself,

himself, treats his company as the stork did the fox, presenting an entertainment to him in a deep pitcher, out of which no creature could feed but a long-billed fowl.

The rules I have laid down are such as take place chiefly in our conversation with strangers. Among friends and acquaintance, where there is freedom and pleasantry, daily practice will be attended with less reserve. But here let me give you warning, that too great familiarity, especially if attended with roughness and importunity, is always dangerous to friendship; which must be treated with some degree of tenderness and delicacy, if you wish it to be lasting. You are to keep your friend by the same behaviour that first won his esteem, And observe this as a maxim verified by daily experience, that men advance themselves more commonly by the lesser arts of discretion, than by the more valuable endowments of wit and science; which without discretion to recommend them, are often left to disappointment and beggary.

The Earl of Chesterfield has given many directions which have been much admired of late years: but his rules are calculated to form the petit maitre, the debauchee, or the insidious politician, with whom it would be to

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