"Good company," says Duclos, "resembles a dispersed republic: the
members of it are found in all classes. Independent of rank and station,
it exists only among those who think and feel; among those who possess
correct ideas and honorable sentiments." The higher classes, constantly
occupied with the absorbing interests of wealth and ambition, formerly
introduced into their magnificent saloons a grave and almost diplomatic
stiffness of manners, of which the solemnity banished nature and
freedom. The amusements of the lower classes, which rather resembled a
toil than a recreation, present to the spectator a procedure
irreconcilable to good taste.
There are, moreover, too many points of resemblance between the manners
and education of the higher and lower classes, to admit of our finding
the elements of good society in either of them. The lower orders are
ignorant, from want of means of instruction; the higher, from indolence
and perpetually increasing incapacity. It is besides not a little
curious that, even in the bygone days of ceremonious manners, the higher
classes, by whom they were practiced, were uniformly taught by those
illiterate persons of the lower classes who almost alone practice the
art of dancing-masters.
It is therefore to the middle class, almost exclusively, that we must
look for good society; to that class which has not its ideas contracted
by laborious occupations, nor its mental powers annihilated by luxury.
In this class, it is truly observed, society is often full of charm:
every one seems, according to the precept of _La Bruyère_, "anxious,
both by words and manners, to make others pleased with him and with
themselves." There are slight differences of character, opinion, and
interest; but there is no prevailing style, no singular or affected
customs. An unperceived interchange of ideas and kind offices produces a
delightful harmony of thoughts and sentiments; and the wish to please
inspires those affectionate manners, those obliging expressions, and
those unrestrained attentions, which alone render social unions pleasant
and desirable.