thout
knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are continually surprised
with graces and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: Chapter V of "The Conduct of Life," 1860.]

[Footnote 35: Theory of gait and demeanor.]

[Footnote 36: From Landor's "Pericles and Aspasia."]

MANNERS AND FASHION[37]

HERBERT SPENCER

Some who shun drawing-rooms do so from inability to bear the restraints
prescribed by a genuine refinement, and they would be greatly improved
by being kept under these restraints. But it is not less true that, by
adding to the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience and
a regard for others, a host of factitious restraints based only on
convention, the refining discipline, which would else have been borne
with benefit, is rendered unbearable, and so misses its end. Excess of
government invariably defeats itself by driving away those to be
governed. And if over all who desert its entertainments in disgust
either at their emptiness or their formality, society thus loses its
salutary influence--if such not only fail to receive that moral culture
which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated, would give them,
but, in default of other relaxation, are driven into habits and
companionships which often end in gambling and drunkenness; must we not
say that here, too, is an evil not to be passed over as insignificant?

Then consider what a blighting effect these multitudinous preparations
and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve. Who, on
calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not
find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How
delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save those
dictated by good nature! How pleasant the little unpretended gatherings
of book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of
a few people well known to each other! Then, indeed, we may see that "a
man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Cheeks flush, and eyes
sparkle. The witty grow brilliant, and even the dull are excited into
saying good things. There is an overflow of topics; and the right
thought, and the right words to put it in, spring up unsought. Grave
alternates with gay: now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes, and
playful raillery. Everyone's best nature is shown, everyone's best
feelings are in pleasurable activity; and, for the time, l