A friend of yours and mine has justly defined good breeding to be "the
result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial
for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence
from them." Taking this for granted (as I think it cannot be disputed),
it is astonishing to me that anybody who had good sense and good nature
(and I believe you have both) can essentially fail in good breeding. As
to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons, places, and
circumstances, and are only to be acquired by observation and
experience; but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the
same. Good manners are to particular societies what good morals are to
society in general--their cement and their security. And as laws are
enacted to enforce good morals, or at least to prevent the ill effects
of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied
and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones. And indeed
there seems to me to be less difference, both between the crimes and
punishments, than at first one would imagine.... Mutual complaisances,
attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an
implied compact between civilized people as protection and obedience are
between kings and subjects: whoever in either case violates that
compact, justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own
part, I really think that next to the consciousness of doing a good
action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing: and the epithet
which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that
of "well-bred."