The first and most obvious reflections which arise in a
man who changes the city for the country, are upon the
different manners of the people whom he meets with in
those two different scenes of life. By manners I do not
mean morals, but behaviour and good breeding as they (10)
show themselves in the town and in the country.
And here, in the first place, I must observe a very
great revolution that has happened in this article of good
breeding. Several[104] obliging deferences, condescensions,
and submissions, with many outward forms and ceremonies (15)
that accompany them, were first of all brought
up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in
courts and cities, and distinguished themselves from the
rustic part of the species--who on all occasions acted
bluntly and naturally--by such a mutual complaisance
and intercourse of civilities. These forms of conversation[105]
by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the
modish[106] world found too great a constraint in them, and
have therefore thrown most of them aside. Conversation, (140: 5)
like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with
show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation
to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its
natural good sense and beauty. At present, therefore,
an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behavior (10)
are the height of good breeding. The fashionable
world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more
loose upon us. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable
negligence. In a word, good breeding shows itself most
where, to an ordinary eye, it appears the least. (15)
[104] Various.
[105] Social intercourse.
[106] Fashionable.
If after this we look on the people of mode in the
country, we find in them the manners of the last age.
They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the fashion
of the polite world but the town has dropped them,[107] and are[108]
nearer to the first stage of nature than to those refinements (20)
which formerly reigned in the court and still prevail
in the country. One may now know a man that never
conversed in the world by his excess of good breeding.
A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in
half an hour as would serve a courtier for a week. There (25)
is infinitely more to do about place and precedency
in a meeting of justices' wives than in an assembly of
duchesses.
[107] _I.e_. the fashions, not the people in the country.
[108] The subject is "town."
This rural politeness is very troublesome to a man of
my temper, who generally take the chair that is next me, (141: 5)
and walk first or last, in the front or in the rear, as
chance directs. I have known my friend Sir Roger's
dinner almost cold before the company could adjust the
ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and
have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have seen him (10)
forced to pick and cull his guests, as they sat at the
several parts of his table, that he might drink their
healths according to their respective ranks and qualities.
Honest Will Wimble, who I should have thought had
been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me (15)
abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has
been fishing all the morning, he will not help himself at
dinner till I am served. When we are going out of the
hall, he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking
in the fields, stopped short at a stile till I came up to (20)
it, and upon my making signs to him to get over, told
me, with a serious smile, that, sure, I believed they had
no manners in the country.
There has happened another revolution in the point
of good breeding, which relates to the conversation (25)
among men of mode, and which I cannot but look
upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the
first distinctions of a well-bred man to express everything
that had the most remote appearance of being obscene
in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown,
who had no such delicacy of conception and expression,
clothed his ideas in most plain, homely terms that are
the most obvious and natural. This kind of good manners
was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make (142: 5)
conversation too stiff, formal, and precise; for which
reason (as hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded
by atheism in another), conversation is in a great measure
relapsed into the first extreme; so that at present
several of our men of the town, and particularly those (10)
who have been polished in France, make use of the most
coarse, uncivilized words in our language, and utter
themselves often in such a manner as a clown would
blush to hear.
This infamous piece of good breeding which reigns (15)
among the coxcombs of the town has not yet made its
way into the country; and as it is impossible for such an
irrational way of conversation to last long among a people
that make any profession of religion, or show of
modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will (20)
certainly be left in the lurch. Their good breeding will
come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel
of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking
together like men of wit and pleasure.
As the two points of good breeding which I have (25)
hitherto insisted upon regard behaviour and conversation,
there is a third which turns upon dress. In this, too, the
country are[109] very much behindhand. The rural beaus
are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the
time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red
coats and laced hats, while the women in many parts are
still trying to outvie one another in the height of their
head-dresses. (143: 5)
[109] Is.
But a friend of mine, who is now upon the western
circuit, having promised to give me an account of the
several modes and fashions that prevail in the different
parts of the nation through which he passes, I shall defer
the enlarging upon this last topic till I have received a (10)
letter from him, which I expect every post. L.