rtunately, confined to very few, and the pretenders to
unreal virtues and the utterer of assumed sentiments are only ill-paid
labourers, working hard to reap no harvest-fruits.

An objection slightly advanced before, may here naturally occur again,
and may be answered more fully, viz. the opposition of the conventional
forms of society to entire simplicity of thought and action, and
consequently to influence. The influence which conventionalism has over
principle is to be utterly disclaimed, but its having an injurious
influence over manner is far more easily obviated; so easily, indeed,
that it may be doubted whether there be not more simplicity in
compliance than in opposition. Originality, either of thought or
behaviour, is most uncommon, and only found in minds above, or in minds
below, the ordinary standard; neither is this peculiar feature of
society in itself a blame-worthy one: it arises out of the constitution
of man, naturally imitative, gregarious, and desirous of approbation.
Nothing would be gained by the abolition of these forms, for they are
representatives of a good spirit; the spirit, it is true, is too often
not there, but it would be better to call it back than to abolish the
form. We have an opportunity of judging how far it would be convenient
or agreeable to do so, in the conduct of some _soi-disant_ contemners of
forms; we perceive that such contempt is equally the offspring of
selfishness with slavish regard: it is only the exchange of the
selfishness of vanity for the selfishness of indolence and pride, and
the world is the loser by the exchange. Hypocrisy has been said to be
the homage which vice pays to virtue. Conventional forms may, with
justice, be called the homage which selfishness pays to benevolence.

How then is simplicity of character to be preserved without violating
conventionalism, to which it seems so much at variance, and yet, which
it ought not to oppose? By the cultivation of that spirit of which
conventional forms are only the symbol, by training children in the
early exercise of the kind the benevolent affections, and by exacting in
the domestic circle all those observances which are the signs of
good-will in society, so that they may be the emanations of a benevolent
heart, instead of the gloss of artificial politeness. Conventionalism
will never injure the simplicity of such characters as these, nay, it
may greatly add to their influence, and secure for their virtues and
t