ers," as Emerson says. From the
artistic and poetical point of view, behavior is an expression of
knowledge and taste and feeling in combination, as clear and legible as
literature or painting, so that when the behavior is coarse and
unbecoming we know that the perceptions cannot be delicate, whatever may
have been learned at school. When Dr. Arnold travelled on the Continent,
nothing struck him more than the absence of gentlemen. "We see no
gentlemen anywhere," he writes from Italy. From France he writes: "Again
I have been struck with the total absence of all gentlemen, and of all
persons of the education and feelings of gentlemen." Now, although Dr.
Arnold spoke merely from the experience of a tourist, and was perhaps
not quite competent to judge of Frenchmen and Italians otherwise than
from externals, still there was much truth in his observation. It was
not quite absolutely true. I have known two or three Italian officers,
and one Savoyard nobleman, and a Frenchman here and there, who were as
perfect gentlemen as any to be found in England, but they were isolated
like poets, and were in fact poets in behavior and self discipline. The
plain truth is, that there is no distinct class in France maintaining
good manners as a tradition common to all its members; and this seems to
be the inevitable defect of a democracy. It may be observed, further,
that language itself is defiled by the vulgarity of the popular taste;
that expressions are used continually, even by the upper middle class,
which it is impossible to print, and which are too grossly indecent to
find a place even in the dictionaries; that respectable men, having
become insensible to the meaning of these expressions from hearing them
used without intention, employ them constantly from habit, as they
decorate their speech with oaths, whilst only purists refrain from them
altogether.

An aristocracy may be very narrow and intolerant, but it can only
exclude from its own pale, whereas when a democracy is intolerant it
excludes from all human intercourse. Our own aristocracy, as a class,
rejects Dissenters, and artists, and men of science, but they flourish
quite happily outside of it. Now try to picture to yourself a great
democracy having the same prejudices, who could get out of the
democracy? All aristocracies are intolerant with reference, I will not
say to religion, but, more accurately, with reference to the outward
forms of religion, and yet this aristocra