ss was not without avail; it kept him in a certain
check, and certainly rendered him more tolerable. He was not quite such
a brute bear as he would have been, left to his uncorrected nature.

Politeness is, and ought to be, a habit so confirmed, that we exercise
it instinctively--without consideration, without attention, without
effort, as it were; this is the very essence of the sort of politeness I
am thinking of. It takes it out of the category of the virtues, it is
true, but it places it in that of the qualities; and, in some matters,
good qualities are almost as valuable, almost more valuable, than if
they still continued among the virtues--and this of politeness, in my
opinion, is one.

By virtues, I mean acts which are performed with a certain difficulty,
under the sense of responsibility to duty, under the self-discipline of
right principle; by qualities, I mean what is spontaneous.
Constitutional good qualities are spontaneous. Such as natural sweetness
of temper--natural delicacy of feeling--natural intrepidity; others are
the result of habit, and end by being spontaneous--by being a second
nature: justly are habits called so. Gentleness of tone and
manner--attention to conventional proprieties--to people's little wants
and feelings--are of these. This same politeness being a sort of summary
of such, I will end this little didactic digression by advising all
those who have the rearing of the young in their hands, carefully to
form them in matters of this description, so that they shall attain
_habits_--so that the delicacy of their perceptions, the gentleness of
their tones and gestures, the propriety of their dress, the politeness
of their manners, shall become spontaneous acts, done without reference
to self, as things of course. By which means, not only much that is
disagreeable to their is avoided, and much that is amiable attained,
but a great deal of reference to self is in after life escaped; and
temptations to the faults of vanity--pride--envious comparisons with our
neighbors, and the feebleness of self-distrust very considerably
diminished.

And so, to return, the politeness of the general and Mrs. Melwyn led to
this result, the leaving Miss Arnold undisturbed to make her reflections
and her observations, before commencing the task which Mrs. Melwyn, for
the last time, undertook for her, of reading the newspaper and playing
the hit.

Lettice could not help feeling rejoiced to be spared this sort