h I have a hearty contempt
for the ignorance, folly, and presumption which characterise the
generality, I cannot but respect the talents of many great men, who
have eminently distinguished themselves in every art and science: these
I shall always revere and esteem as creatures of a superior species,
produced, for the wise purposes of providence, among the refuse of
mankind. It would be absurd to conclude that the Welch or Highlanders
are a gigantic people, because those mountains may have produced a few
individuals near seven feet high. It would be equally absurd to suppose
the French are a nation of philosophers, because France has given birth
to a Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur, and a Buffon.

I shall not even deny, that the French are by no means deficient in
natural capacity; but they are at the same time remarkable for a
natural levity, which hinders their youth from cultivating that
capacity. This is reinforced by the most preposterous education, and
the example of a giddy people, engaged in the most frivolous pursuits.
A Frenchman is by some Jesuit, or other monk, taught to read his mother
tongue, and to say his prayers in a language he does not understand. He
learns to dance and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences.
He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his
own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de
chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is
altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished
above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the
fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is
indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the
whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases
ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately
to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of
address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it is no
more than his making love to every woman who will give him the hearing.
It is an exercise, by the repetition of which he becomes very pert,
very familiar, and very impertinent. Modesty, or diffidence, I have
already said, is utterly unknown among them, and therefore I wonder
there should be a term to express it in their language.

If I was obliged to define politeness, I should call it, the art of
making one's self agreeable. I think it