oice expressions
of the nobility are to be heard there: the manners of such a people
are often vulgar, but they are neither brutal nor mean. I have already
observed that in democracies no such thing as a regular code of good
breeding can be laid down; this has some inconveniences and some
advantages. In aristocracies the rules of propriety impose the same
demeanor on everyone; they make all the members of the same class appear
alike, in spite of their private inclinations; they adorn and they
conceal the natural man. Amongst a democratic people manners are neither
so tutored nor so uniform, but they are frequently more sincere. They
form, as it were, a light and loosely woven veil, through which the real
feelings and private opinions of each individual are easily discernible.
The form and the substance of human actions often, therefore, stand
in closer relation; and if the great picture of human life be less
embellished, it is more true. Thus it may be said, in one sense, that
the effect of democracy is not exactly to give men any particular
manners, but to prevent them from having manners at all.

The feelings, the passions, the virtues, and the vices of an aristocracy
may sometimes reappear in a democracy, but not its manners; they are
lost, and vanish forever, as soon as the democratic revolution is
completed. It would seem that nothing is more lasting than the manners
of an aristocratic class, for they are preserved by that class for some
time after it has lost its wealth and its power--nor so fleeting, for
no sooner have they disappeared than not a trace of them is to be found;
and it is scarcely possible to say what they have been as soon as they
have ceased to be. A change in the state of society works this
miracle, and a few generations suffice to consummate it. The principal
characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by history after an
aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and exquisite touches of manners
are effaced from men's memories almost immediately after its fall. Men
can no longer conceive what these manners were when they have ceased to
witness them; they are gone, and their departure was unseen, unfelt; for
in order to feel that refined enjoyment which is derived from choice and
distinguished manners, habit and education must have prepared the heart,
and the taste for them is lost almost as easily as the practice of them.
Thus not only a democratic people cannot have aristocratic manners, but
t