agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary
meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful
of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the
English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished
idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy
to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own,
that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives to put the
most insignificant person in company on a level with the most
considerable--virtues which our neighbours possess in an eminent
degree,--are, except in a few favoured instances, unknown among us; while
affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is
in ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness,
and impertinence, and effrontery, the appanage of those whose station is
most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more
good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs
of Grosvenor Square.

But God forbid that a word should escape from us which should
seem to place the amusements of society, or the charms of
conversation, in competition with those stern virtues which
are the guardians of an English hearth! The austere fanaticism of the
Puritans, tainted with hypocrisy as it was, was preferable a thousand
times to the orgies of the Regent and the _Parc-aux-Cerfs_. If purity and
refined society be, indeed, incompatible--if the love of freedom and
active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen,
or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we
are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social
pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political
institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the
world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we
add the mercantile habits of our countrymen, the enormous wealth which
their pursuits enable them to accumulate--the great honours which are the
reward of successful industry and ambition--the absurd value annexed to
technical distinctions--the manner in which, in our as in all free
countries, those distinctions are conferred--and a certain disposition to
sneer at any chivalrous, or elevated feeling, from which few of our ladies
are exempt--we shall find it easy to account for the cold, stiff,