ing passed, we are beginning to have in
society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or polished
bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing about the man.
Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the old-school gentleman, in
whose presence the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the countess,
but something far finer than this. These are the people of unruffled
demeanor, who never forget it for a moment, and never let you forget it.
Their presence is a constant rebuke to society. They are never "jolly;"
their laugh is never anything more than a well-bred smile; they
are never betrayed into any enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of
inexperience, of ignorance, of want of culture. They never lose
themselves in any cause; they never heartily praise any man or woman
or book; they are superior to all tides of feeling and all outbursts
of passion. They are not even shocked at vulgarity. They are simply
indifferent. They are calm, visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is
not the eternal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid,
self-conscious repression. You would like to put a bent pin in their
chair when they are about calmly to sit down.

A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that her
eggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on china eggs.
Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of them. We
admire them without envy. They are too beautiful in their manners to be
either prigs or snobs. They are at once our models and our despair. They
are properly careful of themselves as models, for they know that if they
should break, society would become a scene of mere animal confusion.

MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
English.

THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home.

MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about a
cultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdily and
naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others. There's a
sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages of culture on the
island have gone deeper than the surface, and they have simpler and
more natural manners than we. There is something good in the full, round
tones of their voices.

HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling English-man
who had n't secured the place he wanted?

[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops of
omnibuses.]

THE MISTRESS.