most social disposition and real love of men.
Parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate in which
Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged on his
old friend the claims of old friendship with such tenderness that the
house was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my matter,
that I must hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned him for
a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting gold, and
demanded payment:--"No," said Fox, "I owe this money to Sheridan; it is
a debt of honor; if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing
to show." "Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt into a debt
of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his
confidence and paid him, saying, "his debt was of older standing, and
Sheridan must wait." Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend
of the African slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and
Napoleon said of him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805,
"Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an assembly at the
Tuileries."

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever we
insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion
rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will neither
be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor
from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain that,
if we can; but by all means we must affirm this. Life owes much of its
spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion, which affects to be honor, is
often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code. Yet so long as
it is the highest circle in the imagination of the best heads on the
planet, there is something necessary and excellent in it; for it is
not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the dupes of anything
preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the most
rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of
high life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated
manners. I know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter
the acknowledged 'first circles' and apply these terrific standards of
justice, beauty, and benefit to the individuals actually found there.
Monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion
has many classes and many rules of probation and admission, and not
the best alone. There is not only