and good breeding."

"That's your true breeding--that's your sort my boys--
Fun, fire, and pathos--metre, mirth, and noise;
To make you die with laughter, or the hiccups,
Tickle your favourites, or smash your tea-cups."

"By the way, in former times the term _good-breeding_ meant a
combination of all that was amiable and excellent; and a well-bred
person would shrink from an action or expression that could possibly
wound the feelings of another; its foundation was laid in truth, and
its supporting pillars were justice and integrity, sensibility and
philanthropy; but

"In this gay age--in Taste's enlighten'd times,
When Fashion sanctifies the basest crimes;
E'en not to swear and game were impolite,
Since he who sins in _style_ must sure be right."

A well-bred person must learn to smile when he is angry, and to laugh
even when he is vexed to the very soul.

"It would be the height of _mauvaise honte_ for a wellbred person to
blush upon any occasions whatever; no young lady blushes after eleven
years of age; to study the expression of the countenance of others, in
order to govern your own, is indispensably necessary.

"In former times, no well-bred person would have uttered a falsehood;
but now such ideas are completely exploded, and such conduct would now
be termed a _bore_. My Lord Portly remarks, 'It is a cold day.' 'Yes, my
Lord, it is a very cold day,' replies Major Punt. In two minutes after,
meeting Lord Lounge, who observes he thinks the weather very warm--'Yes,
very warm, my Lord,' is the reply--thus contradicting himself almost in
the same breath. It would be perfectly inconsistent in a well-bred
man to think, for fear of being absent. When he enters or leaves a
drawing-room, he should round his shoulders, drop his head, and
imitate a clown or a coachman. This has the effect of the best _ruse
de guerre_--for it serves to astonish the ladies, when they afterwards
~46~~discover, by the familiarity of his address, and his unrestrained
manners, what a well-bred man he is; for he will address every fair one
in the room in the most enchanting terms, except her to whom in the same
party he had previously paid the most particular attention; and on her
he will contrive to turn his back for the whole evening, and if he is a
man of fashion, he will thus cause triumph to the other ladies, and save
the neglected fair one from envious and s