d the change in costume was not more extreme than the change
in social ideas. The court ceased to be the arbiter of manners, though the
aristocracy of the land remained the high exemplar of good breeding.

Yet, even so courtly and materialistic a mind as Lord Chesterfield's
acknowledged a connection between manners and morality, of which latter
the courts of Europe seemed so sparing. In one of the famous "Letters to
His Son" he writes: "Moral virtues are the foundation of society in
general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and
graces, both adorn and strengthen them." Again he says: "Great merit, or
great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little
attentions, mere nothings, either done or reflected, will make you either
liked or disliked, in the general run of the world." For all the wisdom
and brilliancy of his worldly knowledge, perhaps no other writer has done
so much to bring disrepute on the "manners and graces" as Lord
Chesterfield, and this, it is charged, because he debased them so heavily
by considering them merely as the machinery of a successful career. To the
moralists, the fact that the moral standards of society in Lord
Chesterfield's day were very different from those of the present era
rather adds to the odium that has become associated with his attitude. His
severest critics, however, do concede that he is candid and outspoken, and
many admit that his social strategy is widely practised even in these
days.

But the aims of the world in which he moved were routed by the onrush of
the ideals of democratic equality, fraternity, and liberty. With the
prosperity of the newer shibboleths, the old-time notion of aristocracy,
gentility, and high breeding became more and more a curio to be framed
suitably in gold and kept in the glass case of an art museum. The crashing
advance of the industrial age of gold thrust all courts and their sinuous
graces aside for the unmistakable ledger balance of the counting-house.
This new order of things had been a long time in process, when, in the
first year of this century, a distinguished English social historian, the
late The Right Honorable G.W.E. Russell, wrote: "Probably in all ages of
history men have liked money, but a hundred years ago they did not talk
about it in society.... Birth, breeding, rank, accomplishments, eminence
in literature, eminence in art, eminence in public service--all these
things still count for som