V BEHAVIOR GRACE, Beauty, and Caprice Graceful women, chosen men Dazzle every mortal: Their sweet and lofty countenance His enchanting food; He need not go to them, their forms Beset his solitude. He looketh seldom in their face, So dances his heart in his breast, Too weak to win, too fond to shun The tyrants or his doom, The much deceived Endymion BEHAVIOR HE soul which animates nature is not TH less significantly published in the figure, movement and gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtile language is Manners; not what, but how. Life expresses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, face and parts of the face, and by the whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the individual, as resulting from his organization and his will combined, we call manners. What are they but thought entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior? 1 There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy way of doing things; each, once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish with which the routine of life is washed and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communicable; men catch them from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage; and in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behavior.' Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned, into a mode. The power of manners is incessant, an element as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There are certain manners which are learned in good society, of that force that if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them, they solicit him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the ball-room, 2 or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where they may learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to lead and also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but when these have mastered her secret they learn to confront her, and recover their self-possession. Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners are always under examination, and by committees little suspected, a police in citizens' clothes, who are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you least think of it. We talk much of utilities, but 'tis our manners that associate us. In hours of business we go to him who knows, or has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way. But this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease with; those who will go where we go, whose manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we reflect on their persuasive and cheer |