hooting-match. England, which is rich in
gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good
model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox,[428] who
added to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real
love of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the
debate, in which Burke[429] 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[430]: 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."

17. 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, b