Part 2

If you are pleased with the complaisance and attention of others to you, depend upon it, the same complaisance and attention, on your part, will equally please them.

It is not enough not to be rude; you should be civil and distinguished for your good breeding. The first principle of this good breeding is, never to say anything that you think can be disagreeable to anybody in company; but, on the contrary, you should endeavor to say what will be agreeable to them; and that in an easy and natural manner, without seeming to study for compliments. There is likewise such a thing as a civil look and a rude look; you should look civil, as well as be so; for if, while you are saying a civil thing, you look gruff and surly, nobody will be obliged to you for a civility that seemed to come so unwillingly.

If you have occasion to contradict any one, or to set him right from a mistake, it would be very brutal to say, “That is not so; I know better;” or, “You are wrong;” but you should say, with a civil look, “I beg your pardon, I believe you mistake;” or, “If I may take the liberty of contradicting you, I believe it is so and so:” for, though you may know a thing better than other people, yet is very disagreeable to tell them so, directly, without something to soften it; but remember particularly, that whatever you may say or do, with ever so civil an intention, a great deal consists in the manner and the look, which must be genteel, easy, and natural.

Civility is particularly due to all women; and remember that no provocation whatever can justify any person in being uncivil to a woman; and the greatest man in the land would be reckoned a brute, if he was not civil to the meanest woman. It is due to their sex, and is the only protection they have against the superior strength of ours.

MORAL CHARACTER.

There is nothing so delicate as your moral character, and nothing that it is your interest so much to preserve pure. Should you be suspected of injustice, malignity, perfidy, lying, &c., all the parts and knowledge in the world will never procure you esteem, friendship, or respect. A strange concurrence of circumstances has sometimes raised very bad men to high stations; but they have been raised, like criminals to a pillory, where their persons and their crimes, by being more conspicuous, are only the more known, the more pelted and insulted. If in any case whatsoever, dissimulation were pardonable, it would be in the case of morality; though, even then, a Pharasaical pomp of virtue would not be advisable. But I will recommend to you a most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost care not to do or say anything that may ever so slightly taint it. Show yourself, upon all occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the bully, of virtue.

GOOD BREEDING.

Observe the best and most well-bred of the French people; how agreeably they insinuate little civilities in their conversation. They think it so essential that they call an honest and a civil man by the same name, of “honnete homme;” and the Romans called civility, “humanitas,” as thinking it inseparable from humanity: and depend upon it, that your reputation and success will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding of which you are master.

From what has been said, I conclude with the observation, that gentleness of manners, with firmness of mind, is a short but full description of human perfection, on this side of religious and moral duties.

Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor errors in punctuation and spelling were corrected.