ic inculcation, if not practice, of
heartlessness.

The thirteenth-century mother church in the town from which Lord
Chesterfield's title came has a peculiar steeple, graceful in its lines,
but it points askew, from whatever quarter it is seen. The writer of
these Letters, which he never dreamed would be published, is the best
self-portrayed Gentleman in literature. In everything he was naturally a
stylist, perfected by assiduous art, yet the graceful steeple is somehow
warped out of the beauty of the perpendicular. His ideal Gentleman is the
frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture
master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating
adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates,
who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the
heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of
truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His
Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail with the stream, gamble in moderation
if it is the fashion, must stoop to wear ridiculous clothes and ornaments
if they are the mode, though despising his weakness all to himself, and
no true Gentleman could afford to keep out of the little gallantries
which so effectively advertised him as a man of spirit sad charm. Those
repeated injunctions of honor are to be the rule, subject to these
exceptions, which transcend the common proprieties when the subject is
the rising young gentleman of the period and his goal social success. If
an undercurrent of shady morality is traceable in this Chesterfieldian
philosophy it must, of course, be explained away by the less perfect
moral standard of his period as compared with that of our day. Whether
this holds strictly true of men may be open to discussion, but his
lordship's worldly instructions as to the utility of women as
stepping-stones to favor in high places are equally at variance with the
principles he so impressively inculcates and with modern conceptions of
social honor. The externals of good breeding cannot be over-estimated, if
honestly come by, nor is it necessary to examine too deeply into the
prime motives of those who urge them upon a generation in whose eyes
matter is more important than manner. Superficial refinement is better
than none, but the Chesterfield pulpit cannot afford to shirk the duty of
proclaiming loud and far that the only courtesy worthy of respect is that
'p