d her
across, not observing that she was in liquor at the time. But the spirit
of the act was not the less kind on that account. On the other hand,
the conduct of the bookseller on whom Johnson once called to solicit
employment, and who, regarding his athletic but uncouth person, told him
he had better "go buy a porter's knot and carry trunks," in howsoever
bland tones the advice might have been communicated, was simply brutal.

While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and
contradicting everything said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite
habit of assenting to, and sympathising with, every statement made, or
emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is
felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to
steer always between bluntness and plain-dealing, between giving
merited praise and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very
easy--good-humour, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all
that are requisite to do what is right in the right way." [183]

At the same time, many are unpolite--not because they mean to be so, but
because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better. Thus, when Gibbon
had published the second and third volumes of his 'Decline and Fall,'
the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do
you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always AT IT in the old way--SCRIBBLE,
SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE!" The Duke probably intended to pay the author a
compliment, but did not know how better to do it, than in this blunt and
apparently rude way.

Again, many persons are thought to be stiff, reserved, and proud, when
they are only shy. Shyness is characteristic of most people of Teutonic
race. It has been styled "the English mania," but it pervades, to
a greater or less degree, all the Northern nations. The ordinary
Englishman, when he travels abroad, carries his shyness with him. He
is stiff, awkward, ungraceful, undemonstrative, and apparently
unsympathetic; and though he may assume a brusqueness of manner, the
shyness is there, and cannot be wholly concealed. The naturally graceful
and intensely social French cannot understand such a character; and the
Englishman is their standing joke--the subject of their most ludicrous
caricatures. George Sand attributes the rigidity of the natives of
Albion to a stock of FLUIDE BRITANNIQUE which they carry about with
them, that renders them impassive under all circumstances, and "