The soul which animates Nature is not less significantly published in
the figure, movement, and gesture of animated bodies, than in its last
vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtile language is
Manners; not _what_, but _how_. Life expresses. A statue has no
tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature
tells every secret once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by
form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the
whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the
individual, as resulting from his organization and his will combined, we
call manners. What are they but thought entering the hands and feet,
controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior?
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius
or of love,--now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a
rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details
adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a
depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communicable: men catch
them from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons
she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage; and, in real life,
Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine
manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the
advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the
lesson they have learned into a mode.
The power of manners is incessant,--an element as unconcealable as fire.
The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a
republic or a democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist their
influence. There are certain manners which are learned in good society,
of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be
considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth,
or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the
mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of
earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess. We send
girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the
riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into
acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where
they might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman
of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their
belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but
when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront her, and
recover their self-possession.
Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who would obtrude,
now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns to demand that which
belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners are always
under examination, and by committees little suspected,--a police in
citizens' clothes,--but are awarding or denying you very high prizes
when you least think of it.
We talk much of utilities,--but 'tis our manners that associate us. In
hours of business, we go to him who knows, or has, or does this or that
which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way.
But this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for
those we can be at ease with: those who will go where we go, whose
manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we
reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they recommend,
prepare, and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the
members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for
the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries
manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what
high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what
divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph, we
see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience,
power, and beauty.
Their first service is very low,--when they are the minor morals: but
'tis the beginning of civility,--to make us, I mean, endurable to each
other. We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get
people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set
up on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel them to be
clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base,
and choose the generous expression, and make them know how much happier
the generous behaviors are.
Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is infested with rude,
cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and
whom, a public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by
the sense of all, can reach:--the contradictors and railers at public
and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a
dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house
by barking him out of sight:--I have seen men who neigh like a horse
when you contradict them, or say something which they do not
understand:--then the overbold, who make their own invitation to your
hearth; the persevering talker, who gives you his society in large,
saturating doses; the pitiers of themselves,--a perilous class; the
frivolous Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to
twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity;--these are
social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or defend you from,
and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and
proverbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young people in
their school-days.
In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they print, or used to
print, among the rules of the house, that "no gentleman can be permitted
to come to the public table without his coat;" and in the same country,
in the pews of the churches, little placards plead with the worshipper
against the fury of expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly
undertook the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable
particulars. I think the lesson was not quite lost; that it held bad
manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the
book had its own deformities. It ought not to need to print in a
reading-room a caution to strangers not to speak loud; nor to persons
who look over fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs
and butterflies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble statues, that
they shall not smite them with canes. But, even in the perfect
civilization of this city, such cautions are not quite needless in the
Athenaeum and City Library.
Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstance as well as out of
character. If you look at the pictures of patricians and of peasants,
of different periods and countries, you will see how well they match the
same classes in our towns. The modern aristocrat not only is well drawn
in Titian's Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in
the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan.
Broad lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads as can
manage them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, too, will see nice
gradations of rank, or see in the manners the degree of homage the party
is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day to be courted
and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a corresponding
expectation, and a becoming mode of receiving and replying to this
homage.
There are always exceptional people and modes. English grandees affect
to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and, under the finish of dress,
and levity of behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Nature and
Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a
sign for each and for every quality. It is much to conquer one's face,
and perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole secret when
he has learned, that disengaged manners are commanding. Don't be
deceived by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills.
We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in
courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme
irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would
not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;--little cared
he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument
and his indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a
sort of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: but underneath
all this irritability, was a puissant will, firm, and advancing, and a
memory in which lay in order and method like geologic strata every fact
of his history, and under the control of his will.
Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be capacity for
culture in the blood. Else all culture is vain. The obstinate
prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and
monarchical fabrics of the old world, has some reason in common
experience. Every man,--mathematician, artist, soldier, or
merchant,--looks with confidence for some traits and talents in his own
child, which he would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger.
The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. "Take a thorn-bush,"
said the emir Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with
water;--it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it
without culture, and it will always produce dates. Nobility is the
date-tree, and the Arab populace is a bush of thorns."
A main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful expressiveness of
the human body. If it were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts
were written on steel tablets within, it could not publish more truly
its meaning than now. Wise men read very sharply all your private
history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature
is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like
Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement. They
carry the liquor of life flowing up and down in these beautiful bottles,
and announcing to the curious how it is with them. The face and eyes
reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The
eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through how many forms it
has already ascended. It almost violates the proprieties, if we say
above the breath here, what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter
to every street passenger.
Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imperfect. In
Siberia, a late traveller found men who could see the satellites of
Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel us.
The birds have a longer sight, beside the advantage by their wings of a
higher observatory. A cow can bid her calf by secret signal, probably of
the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The jockeys say
of certain horses, that "they look over the whole ground." The outdoor
life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. A
farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the
stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun,
or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams
of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.
The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a thought strikes us,
the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a distance; in enumerating the names
of persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes
wink at each new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by the
mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," said Michel
Angelo, "must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye;"
and there is no end to the catalogue of its performances, whether in
indolent vision, (that of health and beauty,) or in strained vision,
(that of art and labor.)
Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far
and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction;
they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age, or rank; they respect
neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor
sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you, in a
moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from
one soul into another, through them! The glance is natural magic. The
mysterious communication established across a house between two entire
strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by the
glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will.
It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into the eyes to
know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but
make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations
are sometimes terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is
there made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls,
and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and
simplicity. 'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at the
windows of the house does at once invest himself in a new form of his
own, to the mind of the beholder.
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage,
that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the
world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a
practised man relies on the language of the first. If the man is off
his centre, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your
companion, whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not
confess it. There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a
good thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all
the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in
the eye. How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though
dissembled by the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may
easily happen, he has said nothing, and no important remark has been
addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society, he shall not
have a sense of this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into
him, and out from him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure,
that give no more admission into the man than blueberries. Others are
liquid and deep,--wells that a man might fall into;--others are
aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much
notice, and require crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, to
protect individuals against them. The military eye I meet, now darkly
sparkling under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of
Lacedaemon; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting
eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate,--some of good, and some of
sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in
beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the
will, before it can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that
each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the
immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete
man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked
on him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were
generous and universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because
they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features
have their own. A man finds room in the few square inches of the face
for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his
history, and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater,
will tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms
express strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose
of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest "the terrors of the
beak." What refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Beware
you don't laugh," said the wise mother, "for then you show all your
faults."
Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called "_Theorie de la
demarche_" in which he says: "The look, the voice, the respiration, and
the attitude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given to
man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these four different
simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch that one which speaks out
the truth, and you will know the whole man."
Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, which, in the
idle and expensive society dwelling in them, are raised to a high art.
The maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm and resolute
bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of
hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and
Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and an encyclopaedia of
Memoires, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets.
Thus, it is a point of pride with kings, to remember faces and names.
It is reported of one prince, that his head had the air of leaning
downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. There are people who come
in ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was said of the late
Lord Holland, that he always came down to breakfast with the air of a
man who had just met with some signal good-fortune. In "_Notre Dame_,"
the grandee took his place on the dais, with the look of one who is
thinking of something else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop at
palace-doors.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. A scholar may
be a well-bred man, or he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to
polished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding
himself not in their element. They all have somewhat which he has not,
and, it seems, ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from
his companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the scholar has no
defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out
on their private strengths. What is the talent of that character so
common,--the successful man of the world,--in all marts, senates, and
drawing-rooms? Manners: manners of power; sense to see his advantage,
and manners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows that troops
behave as they are handled at first;--that is his cheap secret; just
what happens to every two persons who meet on any affair,--one instantly
perceives that he has the key of the situation, that his will
comprehends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has only
to use courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to cover
up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance.
The theatre in which this science of manners has a formal importance is
not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the
day's business, men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment,
in ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it has every variety of
attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who
have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed,
talkative company, where each is bent to amuse the other.--yet the
high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every woman seemed to be
suffering for a chair; that all the talkers were brained and exhausted
by the deoxygenated air: it spoiled the best persons: it put all on
stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies written and read. The
aspect of that man is repulsive: I do not wish to deal with him. The
other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks humble and
manly: I choose him. Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor
brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you; but all see her
gladly; her whole air and impression are healthful. Here come the
sentimentalists, and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in
coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are
creep-mouse manners; and thievish manners. "Look at Northcote," said
Fuseli; "he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow
company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard: the
Alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. Here are the
sweet following eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she demanded the
heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace
of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better
manners than she; for the movements of Blanche are the sallies of a
spirit which is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to express
every thought by instant action.
Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise
men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who
do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society
is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists
and sneers at you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the
party attacked; the second is still more effective, but is not to be
resisted, as the date of the transaction is not easily found. People
grow up and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth,
ascribing the solitude which acts on them very injuriously, to any cause
but the right one.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all
who are not self-possessed. Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude,
and pain us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah
caste. They fear to offend, they bend and apologize, and walk through
life with a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a
well-dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he
suffered from some mortifying circumstance. The hero should find
himself at home, wherever he is; should impart comfort by his own
security and good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered to be
himself. A person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him an
immunity is secured so long as he renders to society that service which
is native and proper to him,--an immunity from all the observances, yea,
and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file
of its members. "Euripides," says Aspasia, "has not the fine manners of
Sophocles; but,"--she adds good-humoredly, "the movers and masters of
our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as
they please, on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures
they have animated."[4]
[4] Landor: Pericles and Aspasia.
Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. Friendship
should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into
corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually
command. Here comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading
and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'Tis a great
destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large
leisures, but contrariwise should be balked by importunate affairs.
But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is ever shining. 'Tis
hard to keep the _what_ from breaking through this pretty painting of
the _how_. The core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen
perception overpower old manners, and create new; and the thought of the
present moment has a greater value than all the past. In persons of
character, we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness.
We are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch the way of
it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the great style
which runs through the actions of such. People masquerade before us in
their fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as academic or civil
presidents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on
the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At least,
it is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations
tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows these
fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in Paris the chief of
the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and
make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating
look as they pass. "I had received," said a sibyl, "I had received at
birth the fatal gift of penetration:"--and these Cassandras are always
born.
Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his
point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads.
And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making
him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression.
Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, is
seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be done
for love. A man inspires affection and honor, because he was not lying
in wait for these. The things of a man for which we visit him, were
done in the dark and the cold. A little integrity is better than any
career. So deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even the
size of your companion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not
only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but
everything around him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter's
rule, no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or
house-lot: go into the house: if the proprietor is constrained and
deferring, 'tis of no importance how large his house, how beautiful his
grounds,--you quickly come to the end of all: but if the man is
self-possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded,
indefinitely large and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant as the
sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest person in plain clothes
sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian colossi.
Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Champollion has set
down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older than Sanscrit; but they
who cannot yet read English, can read this. Men take each other's
measure, when they meet for the first time,--and every time they meet.
How do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each
other's power and dispositions? One would say, that the persuasion of
their speech is not in what they say,--or, that men do not convince by
their argument,--but by their personality, by who they are, and what
they said and did heretofore. A man already strong is listened to, and
everything he says is applauded. Another opposes him with sound
argument, but the argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the
mind of some weighty person; then it begins to tell on the community.
Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty that the
powers are not squandered in too much demonstration. In this country,
where school education is universal, we have a superficial culture, and
a profusion of reading and writing and expression. We parade our
nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working them up into
happiness. There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand
it,--'whatever is known to thyself alone, has always very great value.'
There is some reason to believe, that, when a man does not write his
poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent
of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often
nothing poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi said, that
"when a man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less
possession of it." One would say, the rule is,--What a man is
irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In explaining his thought
to others, he explains it to himself: but when he opens it for show, it
corrupts him.
Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their
literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new
importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist
begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more
worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone.
The novels used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of
the boy and girl they described. The boy was to be raised from a humble
to a high position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the
object of the story was to supply him with one or both. We watched
sympathetically, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, the point
is gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the gala procession
home to the castle, when the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor
reader is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea,
or a virtuous impulse.
But the victories of character are instant, and victories for all. Its
greatness enlarges all. We are fortified by every heroic anecdote. The
novels are as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the
best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or
perfect understanding between sincere people. 'Tis a French definition
of friendship, _rien que s'entendre_, good understanding. The highest
compact we can make with our fellow, is,--'Let there be truth between us
two for evermore.' That is the charm in all good novels, as it is the
charm in all good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, from
the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound trust in each other. It
is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or
write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of
remembrance: I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, I know
it was right.
In all the superior people I have met, I notice directness, truth spoken
more truly, as if everything of obstruction, of malformation, had been
trained away. What have they to conceal? What have they to exhibit?
Between simple and noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence:
they recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents
and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and
uprightness. For, it is not what talents or genius a man has, but how
he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The
man that stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. It is
related of the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by the Pope, he
was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of
suffering in hell; but, such was the eloquence and good-humor of the
monk, that, wherever he went he was received gladly, and civilly
treated, even by the most uncivil angels: and, when he came to discourse
with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part,
and adopted his manners: and even good angels came from far, to see him,
and take up their abode with him. The angel that was sent to find a
place of torment for him, attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but
with no better success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk,
that he found something to praise in every place and company, though in
hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel
returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying, that no
phlegethon could be found that would burn him; for that, in whatever
condition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his
sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was
canonized as a saint.
There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence of Bonaparte with
his brother Joseph, when the latter was King of Spain, and complained
that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate tone which had
marked their childish correspondence. "I am sorry," replies Napoleon,
"you think you shall find your brother again only in the Elysian Fields.
It is natural, that at forty, he should not feel towards you as he did
at twelve. But his feelings towards you have greater truth and
strength. His friendship has the features of his mind."
How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic
manners! We will pardon them the want of books, of arts, and even of
the gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them! Here is a
lesson which I brought along with me in boyhood from the Latin School,
and which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was
accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to
take arms against the Republic. But he, full of firmness and gravity,
defended himself in this manner: "Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that
Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited the allies to arms:
Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, denies it. There is no
witness. Which do you believe, Romans?" "_Utri creditis, Quirites?_"
When he had said these words, he was absolved by the assembly of the
people.
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty;
that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in
memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make
that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception,
the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control:
you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word;
and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they
must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of
complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not
pain around us.
'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better
to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a
companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture,
which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. Special
precepts are not to be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains
them all. Every hour will show a duty as paramount as that of my whim
just now; and yet I will write it,--that there is one topic peremptorily
forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their
distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have
headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by
all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which
all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and
groans. Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out
of your landscape. The oldest and the most deserving person should come
very modestly into any newly awaked company, respecting the divine
communications, out of which all must be presumed to have newly come.
An old man who added an elevating culture to a large experience of life,
said to me, "When you come into the room, I think I will study how to
make humanity beautiful to you."
As respects the delicate question of culture, I do not think that any
other than negative rules can be laid down. For positive rules, for
suggestion, Nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth,
a maid, to perfect manners?--the golden mean is so delicate,
difficult,--say frankly, unattainable. What finest hands would not be
clumsy to sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's demeanor? The
chances seem infinite against success; and yet success is continually
attained. There must not be secondariness, and 'tis a thousand to one
that her air and manner will at once betray that she is not primary, but
that there is some other one or many of her class, to whom she
habitually postpones herself. But Nature lifts her easily, and without
knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are continually surprised
with graces and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable.