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power which confers the dictatorship ; there is no law, nor even custom, to back the pretension; nor is there any well defined personal characteristic which can be safely depended upon, as warranting the exercise of the powers wielded in its name. The proof of the right lies altogether in its exercise; and, as Voltaire irreverently said of the priesthood," Notre ignorance fait toute leur science," so the setters of fashions and etiquettes may say that the general submission makes all their supremacy. In a government thus established, there can be no written law, because no one would be so rash as to bring his authority into open question by affixing his name to a code. Other associations have their “ rules and regulations,” because the legislators who draw them up are especially appointed ad hoc; but the legislators for etiquette have no indisputable rights, save those which are undisputed, and there must be neither hand nor seal affixed to their edicts.

In another sense, indeed, there may be still something approaching to the literal in the application of the word, inasmuch, namely, as a perfect knowledge of etiquette is a real shiboleth, or ticket of admission, into good society. The code of etiquette, like the unwritten common law of the land, is cognizable only through practice; and they who are not born and brought up within the sphere of its activity, have but a small chance of mastering all its details. Accordingly, a breach of etiquette, however trifling, is universally held to be the best evidence that the offender is not" one of us,” but has surreptitiously crept into the enchanted circle, and is a proper subject for social ostracism ; and it is on this account, that to eat peas with knife, very justly shuts the doors of the polite more absolutely against the criminal, than a faux pas at Crockford's or a verdict for crim. con. in the Court of Queen's Bench.

In this dispensation there is nothing injurious to the parties for whose use the code of etiquettes is promulgated; on the contrary, it has this positive and specific advantage, that it forms an effectual circumvallation, defending them from the encroachments of false and unfounded pretension. No art nor artifice could keep at arm's length the would-be exclusives, if, by conning a written code, they could acquire a due knowledge of the infinite vitanda faciendaque which constitute a polite carriage ; but that, as we have said, can only be done by those who have served a regular apprenticeship to the business; and the mark of the beast is conspicuous on the foreheads of all not so circumstanced; 80 that, like vice, to be hated, they need but to be seen.

From a consideration of these preliminaries, as applicable to the love of aristocracy innate in the lower classes of Englishmen, and to the number of upstarts which are brought into the field to fight for a good place in society, it will not surprise our readers that a book upon etiquettes, recently published, should have run through seventeen editions, or have been received as a perfect code by all who know nothing of what good society really says or does. Upon this point, conscience maintains its rights in all their vigour; and the first thing that strikes an aspiring candidate for “the genteel thing,” is a deep conviction of his own inabilities. When Lord Duberly was desired to refrain from drinking his tea from the saucer, he at once replied, “ La! my Lady, my throat a’n’t paved ;” and, in the same spirit of humility, all who are anxious to cut old friends and addict themselves to a more elevated society, discover the unpaved condition of their whole moral complex : they make, therefore, their entrée into a new life either with a diffidence which, however well founded, contributes powerfully to spoil the little fitness they may possess for the attempt, and very greatly tends to deteriorate the general effect; or they dash in with a fuss and a swagger, which still more strikingly betrays them. To this consciousness we are inclined very mainly to attribute the sale of the seventeen editions above mentioned—not to speak of the numberless editions of what are called “ silver-forked novels,” which are rashly taken as professed schools of gentility-as etiquette propounding her most recondite philosophy by examples—and as the safest and surest guides to “the whole practice of high life.” Whoever is conversant with the exclusive society of Margate and other similar wateringplaces, may, if he be a nice observer, detect the influence of the last of " these best public instructors ” in forming the particular airs and graces of the season. Nay, we are inclined to think that our police magistrates would profit by a regular perusal of these oracles as they are published, which would enable them more thoroughly to enter into the spirit of the new “ larks” practised by the graduates of the watch-house, in servile imitation of those authorities.

Let it not, however, be imagined of this general anxiety of the public to possess themselves of such printed codes of etiquette, that it is a proof of the parties being altogether wanting in the commodity they would purchase. Every circle has an etiquette of its own, which is not the less rigorously observed, for wanting the seal of high authority. It was but the other day that we ourselves heard a job coachman at a review resent a breach of etiquette in a brother of the whip; when, upon being remonstrated with by the lookers-on for his churlishness, he replied at once, “ Why didn't he ask me civilly?” and, turning to his opponent, told him, “ I know manners, if you don't-I'll teach you that, blessed if I don't.” The lower classes are remarkably ceremonious in their casual intercourse. “ Yes, sir,” no, sir,” are the common forms of social intercourse in the streets ; and the very barrow-women are elaborate in their verbal civilities to each other, whenever their interests or their tempers do not happen to tend to a breach of the peace. A very rigid etiquette also governs the occasions and modes of " standing treat," and the due repayment thereof in time and season. Domestic servitude in great houses is overlaid by etiquettes impassable lines of circumvallation are drawn, excluding the outdoor servants from equality with those whose services lie in the interior, and separating the “ people” of the second table from the gentlemen and ladies of the first. Even beggary itself has its eti. quettes, and an ungenteel intrusion of one mendicant upon another's walk is universally resented by the corps, as very low misbehaviour. The trying conclusions with Fortune by the agency of the tea-leaves at the bottom of a cup, is perfectly “ according to Hoyle" among maidservants and washerwomen ; but it is considered a gross breach of etiquette among the more refined teachers, in the various seminaries for young ladies that occupy the suburban roadsides of our great metropolis. In like manner, there are “ houses " in which the froth may,

with

perfect propriety, be blown from a porter pot before drinking; and others in which etiquette commands the thirsty to thrust their proboscis “ nine

and “

fathom deep,” if need be, into the yeasty fermentation. Various are the laws which regulate the pledging of the wine-cup (or the beer-mug, as the case may happen) in the different circles which divide the genus homo; from the “ Sir, to you," of those “ licensed to be drunk on the premises,” to the more elaborate “ It is some time since I have had the honour, &c. &c.,” and “Will you allow me to make up for lost time," or the ironical “ Since you are so pressing, I will drink a glass of wine with you," of playhouse-hunting tradesman—or to the laconic “ wine ?” and short jerk of the head of the more civilised inhabitants of Baker Street and the Regent's Park. On joining a strange dinnerparty we strongly advise a minute examination into the prevailing etiquette in this essential; for, as the vendors of quack medicines say, mistakes are dangerous. The point is a nice touchstone of breeding, and if your manner be not exactly in harmony with that of the company, your genteel ease will be mistaken for impertinence, or your elaborate politeness for underbreeding and a bore.

Lodging and boarding-houses have a code of their own, which regulates, with the rigour of the laws of the Medes and Persians, the intercourse permitted between the gentleman on the first-floor and his less aristocratic fellow-lodgers of the two-pair backwards. Recognition, for instance, when they meet on the stairs, is a requisite politeness, which is not indispensable if the rencontre is not within the walls of the common mansion. In these establishments, it is not etiquette to call the one maid-servant from her service to another lodger, or to remove a neighbour's saucepan from the kitchen fire, in order to make way for your own; and it is very low and vulgar to peep through a keyhole, or to notice anything you may discover by a chance-open door in your passage through the house. The breach of this wise rule always leads to open hostilities. In boarding-houses etiquette requires every one to place himself at the table according to the date of his standing in the house; and even the church's nullum tempus is of no avail against this rule. Etiquette does not require him who indulges in the luxury of wine to participate with those who cannot afford it, but it does not absolutely forbid the offer; and, if it be not more frequently made, it is probably on the refined principle that isla commemoratio quasi exprobatio est, — that the courtesy conceals the reproach of pecuniary inferiority.

If etiquette is absolute in the lower circles of town life, it is still more arbitrary in the provinces. There, it strictly forbids all intercourse between tradesmen and those who do not keep a shop; between those who do and those who do not keep a carriage; and generally between all classes and conditions of towns-folks and the landed gentilatres of the surrounding parishes. Where the rustics are blessed with the presence of a collegiate clergy, the supremacy of “ the close" over the city is preserved with more jealousy, than the privileges of either house of parliament. The dean is facile princeps for ten miles round; and the prebendaries' wives would resent a més-alliance with the whist-tables of the mayoress (who is no lady) as bitterly as a German transparency, of more quarterings than acres. In such places, life is passed in the observance of etiquettes, the assertion of rights, and the strict concession of dues to others. From the verger with silver staff, who“ trips before the Dean,” and the bellman with his “O yes,”

upwards, there is a regular hierarchy; and woe to him who outsteps the modesty of provincial aristocracy, to “ assume a merit though he have it not,” or forgets himself for one instant into ease and common sense, when he ought to be stiff and reverential. But while one constitutional etiquette regulates the general intercourse, or rather non-intercourse, between all the circles of the town, there is what may be called a municipal etiquette that governs the behaviour of each within itself. Those who have voyaged extensively, in noting the various usages of different nations have admired that man should so differ from himself; but how much more striking are the variations observable in the minutest particulars of conduct in societies separated," not by whole ocean's roll,” but by the slender thread of country etiquette ! The apothecary, alone, who, by the despotism of circumstances, is admitted alike into all the circles, acquires by the contact a little of the colour of each; but if his wife avail herself of the knowledge thus picked up, to practise any of the airs of her husband's higher patients, she at once becomes the envy and the ridicule of all, for her singularity and conceit.

This apparently curious fact may be traced to a general law of nature, by which all things, in order to subsist, must possess whatever is necessary for their existence. Human associations, like natural bodies, must be held together by attractive forces stronger than the revellent: when the revellent prevail, anarchy or despotism ensue, and the association is soon brought to an end. For any such association, then, to be permanent, the social intercourse must be regulated by laws of some kind; and a code of etiquettes, assorted to circumstances, for regulating the smaller courtesies of life, is as essential to this end, as the decalogu itself, with “ Burn's Justice” to boot, for a penal sanction. Every such association, therefore, if it does not find a code ready made to its hand, gradually builds up one for itself, not theoretically and of aforethought, but empirically, or rather instinctively, by the establishment

of a usage:

Some theorists assert that the rules of etiquette are abstract truths; and they talk of natural politeness as of something in rerum naturâ. Under due limits, there may be some truth in the doctrine; but beyond those limits all is adaptation and convention. Thus the physiological distinctions of sex have established gallantry of deportment towards females as an universal law; yet in some countries we find this gallantry manifested by a satisfactory application of the cudgel; in others, by a sound pinch, or by what the French call un gros baiser, before company; while in the best societies of Europe, etiquette requires an obsequious and deferential exterior towards the sex, coupled with a profound inward contempt for them, and the most heartless cruelty. In like manner, hospitality is an universal etiquette derived from the necessities and natural sympathies common to all human beings; yet nothing can be more conventional than the modes by which it is manifested. Some savages insist upon cramming their guest to suffocation, stuffing the victuals down his throat with their own hands; of which custom some remnants are preserved in Old England, in certain circles, where an host is thought negligent, if he does not tease every one at table to eat more than he likes, or is good for him. “Much good may it do you when ye’s ate,” is an Irish grace after meat, reproaching the company with not having done justice to a good dinner. " Eat this, I can't,” is another form of ceremony to the same effect, commonly called (though why we know not) a Devonshire compliment; for we could safely take our oaths, that his Grace “ of that ilk” never made use of the phrase, in the long course of his princely hospitalities. Pope tells us that Scotchmen press their plums on their friends in a like ungainly way; but as we have it on another great authority, that long after Pope's time, there was not such a thing as a tree in all Scotland, (and, inclusivé, no such thing as a plum-tree,) we should rather doubt that Scotchmen had any plums to offer ; and either take the assertion to be, like the oaths of Frère Jean des Entommeures, “couleurs de rhétorique Ciceronienne," a mere figure of speech, or believe that the wit and the philosopher, like his great original, sometimes indulged in a nap, and saw the fruit-giving Scotchman only in a dream.

It is still within the memory of man, that, in the very best cireles of England, etiquette prescribed the locking of the door after dinner, and suffered not any man to leave the room, till he was unable to quit it without help-an usage which comes still nearer to that of the snvages with whom we started. In those days,

as drunk as a lord," was a phrase of some meaning; and we remember that when a witness described himself as being as sober as a judge,” it was pertinently retorted by the advocate, “ Pray, Sir, do you mean a judge before, or a judge after dinner?” How this time-honoured custom of our ancestors was broken through, it were difficult to decide. Many there are who attribute it to taxation, which made this excessive hospitality inconveniently expensive; and the opinion has in its favour certain statistical returns, connecting the enhanced duty with a corresponding general diminution of consumption. With long sittings after dinner, “ taking wine” with the company at divner, fell into disrepute—a change which is gradually finding its way downwards in society. What the ultimate consequences of this alteration in our etiquettes will be, it is yet too early to discover; but this we know, that the epoch of transition is attended with much general inconvenience, strangers being very frequently, as they themselves are wont to express the matter, quondary,” to know what to do—being distracted between the dislike to going without their wine if they remain silent, or of being thought vulgar if they challenge a neighbour. Certain it is, that in some houses “ where things are so, so," and servants not sufficiently abundant, the footman, who for the occasion does duty out of livery, by way of butler, is compelled to make his angel visits with the sherry decanter rather few and far between. To the shy and awkward, also, the courtesy was a capital chausse-pié, or, introduction to a conversation with the lady who happened to sit next to him, and whom he did not necessarily know; for it is only in the one great circle that everybody in London knows everybody

There is a great moral to be drawn from this philosophy of etiquettes ; namely, that as every circle has its own etiquettes, with which all its members are necessarily well acquainted, the whole danger of a breach of its code depends upon a perverse desire of individuals to thrust themselves into circles to which they do not naturally belong; or, worse still, upon an absurd attempt to practise at second-hand the airs and graces which they have heard are peculiar to the societies of their betters. There

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