h had led him to review my conduct as a whole. We are all
ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords; we should consider also the
case of a lord among the ploughmen. I have seen a lawyer in the house of
a Hebridean fisherman; and I know, but nothing will induce me to
disclose, which of these two was the better gentleman. Some of our
finest behaviour, though it looks well enough from the boxes, may seem
even brutal to the gallery. We boast too often manners that are
parochial rather than universal; that, like a country wine, will not
bear transportation for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour to the
kitchen. To be a gentleman is to be one all the world over, and in every
relation and grade of society. It is a high calling, to which a man must
first be born, and then devote himself for life. And, unhappily, the
manners of a certain so-called upper grade have a kind of currency, and
meet with a certain external acceptation throughout all the others, and
this tends to keep us well satisfied with slight acquirements and the
amateurish accomplishments of a clique. But manners, like art, should be
human and central.

Some of my fellow-passengers, as I now moved among them in a relation of
equality, seemed to me excellent gentlemen. They were not rough, nor
hasty, nor disputatious; debated pleasantly, differed kindly; were
helpful, gentle, patient, and placid. The type of manners was plain, and
even heavy; there was little to please the eye, but nothing to shock;
and I thought gentleness lay more nearly at the spring of behaviour than
in many more ornate and delicate societies. I say delicate, where I
cannot say refined; a thing may be fine, like ironwork, without being
delicate, like lace. There was here less delicacy; the skin supported
more callously the natural surface of events, the mind received more
bravely the crude facts of human existence; but I do not think that
there was less effective refinement, less consideration for others, less
polite suppression of self. I speak of the best among my
fellow-passengers; for in the steerage, as well as in the saloon, there
is a mixture. Those, then, with whom I found myself in sympathy, and of
whom I may therefore hope to write with a greater measure of truth, were
not only as good in their manners, but endowed with very much the same
natural capacities, and about as wise in deduction, as the bankers and
barristers of what is called society. One and all were too much
intereste