ts 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 Bruyere_, "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.

FRIENDSHIP.

This subject was forcibly presented to my mind by a conversation I
recently heard in a party of young ladies, and which I take as a pattern
and semblance of twenty other conversations I have heard in twenty
similar parties. Friendship was (as it very often is) the subject of the
discussion; and, though the words have escaped my memory, I can well
recall the substance of the remarks. One lady boldly asserted that there
was no such thing as friendship in the world, where all was insincerity
and selfishness. I looked, but saw not in her youthful eye and
unfurrowed cheeks any traces of the sorrow and ill-usage that I thought
should alone have wrung from gentle lips so harsh a sentence, and I
wondered where in twenty brief years she could have learned so hard a
lesson. Have known it, she could not! therefore I concluded she had
taken it upon tr