n perhaps, on being
reminded that the lowest of these obeisances are common where the
submission is most abject; that among ourselves the profundity of the
bow marks the amount of respect; and lastly, that the bow is even now
used devotionally in our churches--by Catholics to their altars, and by
Protestants at the name of Christ--they will see sufficient evidence for
thinking that this salutation also was originally worship.

The same may be said, too, of the curtsy, or courtesy, as it is
otherwise written. Its derivation from _courtoisie_, courteousness, that
is, behaviour like that at court, at once shows that it was primarily
the reverence paid to a monarch. And if we call to mind that falling
upon the knees, or upon one knee, has been a common obeisance of
subjects to rulers; that in ancient manuscripts and tapestries, servants
are depicted as assuming this attitude while offering the dishes to
their masters at table; and that this same attitude is assumed towards
our own queen at every presentation; we may infer, what the character of
the curtsy itself suggests, that it is an abridged act of kneeling. As
the word has been contracted from _courtoisie_ into curtsy, so the
motion has been contracted from a placing of the knee on the floor, to a
lowering of the knee towards the floor. Moreover, when we compare the
curtsy of a lady with the awkward one a peasant girl makes, which, if
continued, would bring her down on both knees, we may see in this last a
remnant of that greater reverence required of serfs. And when, from
considering that simple kneeling of the West, still represented by the
curtsy, we pass Eastward, and note the attitude of the Mahometan
worshipper, who not only kneels but bows his head to the ground, we may
infer that the curtsy also is an evanescent form of the aboriginal
prostration.

In further evidence of this it may be remarked, that there has but
recently disappeared from the salutations of men, an action having the
same proximate derivation with the curtsy. That backward sweep of the
foot with which the conventional stage-sailor accompanies his bow--a
movement which prevailed generally in past generations, when "a bow and
a scrape" went together, and which, within the memory of living persons,
was made by boys to their schoolmaster with the effect of wearing a hole
in the floor--is pretty clearly a preliminary to going on one knee. A
motion so ungainly could never have been intentionally intr