him are changed. In good society no one ever cuts another in such a manner as to be generally remarked, and the reason is obvious: It causes awkwardness and confusion in the rest of the company. It is worse. Between

a guest and host the relation is supposed to be friendly; if not so, it can always be immediately discontinued; so that generally the ill will must be between one guest and another under the same roof. But what does it then amount to? Is it not a slur upon your host's judgment? Is it not as much as to say, "This man is unfit for me to know; and, since you are his friend, you must be unworthy of me too?" At any rate, it is mortifying to a host to find that he has brought two enemies together, and, with the respect due from a guest to a host you must abstain from making his house a field of battle. There is no occasion for hypocrisy. Politeness, cold and distant if you like it, can cost you nothing, and is never taken to mean friendship. In short, harmony and peace are the rules of good society, as of Christianity, and its denizen: can and do throw aside the most bitter enmities when meeting on the neutral ground of a friend's house. Nor is the armistice without its value. Like that between Austria and France, it is not unfrequently followed by overtures of peace; and I have known two people who had not interchanged two words for a score of years, shake hands before they left a house where they had been accidentally brought together. Had they not been wellbred this reconciliation could never have taken place.

The relations of guest to guest are not so well understood in this country as on the Continent. There your host's friends are for the time your friends. When you enter a room you have a right to speak to, and be ad.

dressed by, everybody present. The friendship of your host, declared, as it were, in his inviting them there, is a sufficient recommendation and introduction to every one of his guests. If you and they are good enough for him to invite, you and they are good enough for each other to know, and it is, therefore, an insult to your host to re main next to a person for a long time without addressing him. In exclusive England we require that our host or hostess shall give a special introduction to every guest, but in the best society this is not absolutely necessary. Exclusiveness is voted to be of bad style; and two people who sat next to one another for a long time, with no one to talk to, would be thought ill-bred as well as ridiculous if they waited for the formal introduction to exchange a few words, at least at a party where conversation was the main object.

As we boast of English hospitality, it is a wonder that we do not better observe the relations of host and guest. On the Continent any man, whether you know him or not, who has crossed your threshold with friendly intent, is your guest, and you are bound to treat him as one. In England a friend must introduce him, unless he has the ingenuity of Theodore Hook, who always introduced himself where there was a dinner going on, and managed to make himself welcome, too; but among ill-bred peopl› even this introduction does not suffice, and the vulga often take pride to themselves in proving that their house are their castles. A late neighbor of mine, of somewhat peppery temper, used to tell with glee how he had turned out of his house a gentleman-an innocent but not attractive man—who had been brought there by a common friend but whom he did not wish to know. I often thought

when I heard the tale repeated, "How little you think you are telling a story against yourself!" So, too, when Arabella, speaking of Charles, with whom she has quarrelled, tells me so proudly, I cut him last night dead, and before the whole party, to his utter confusion," 1 whisper to myself, "He may richly have deserved the punishment, but I would not have been the executioner." In fact, whether as host or guest, we must remember the feelings of the rest of the company, and that a show of animosity between any of them always mars the sense of peaceful enjoyment, for which all have met. To pick a quarrel, to turn your back on a person, to cut him openly, or to make audible remarks on him, are displays of temper only found in vulgar society.

The other requisites indispensable for good society will be found in various chapters of this work. Confidence, calm, and good habits, are treated in the chapter on carriage. Good manners is, more or less, the subject of the whole book, and appropriate dress, another indispensable, is discussed under that head. Accomplishments, on which I have given a chapter, are not generally considered indispensable, and certainly a man or woman of good education and good breeding could pass muster without them. But they lend a great charm to society, and in some cases are a very great assistance to it. Indeed, there are some accomplishments an ignorance of which may prove ex-tremely awkward. Perhaps, however, the most valuable accomplishment or rather art, especially in persons of full-age, is that of making society easy, and of entertaining. Rules and hints for this will be given in various sections, but I may here say that it is an art which demands no little labor and ingenuity, and if anybody

imagines that the offices of host and hostess are sinecures, he is greatly mistaken. The great principle is that of movement. According to the atomic theory, warmth and brilliance are gained by the rapidity of the atoms about one another. We are only atoms in society after all, and we certainly get both warmth and brilliance when we revolve round each other in the ball-room. But it is rather mental movement that I refer to just now, although the other is by no means unimportant, and the host and hostess should, when possible, be continually shifting their places, easily and gracefully, talking to everybody more or less, and inducing others to move. But there must be something for the minds of those assembled to dwell upon; something to suggest thought, and thus generate conversation. If the host or hostess have themselves the talent, they should do this by continually leading the conversation, not after the manner of Sydney Smith, who, while dinner was going on, allowed Mackintosh, Jeffrey, and Stewart, to fall into vehement discussion, while he himself quietly made an excellent meal, and prepared for better things. The moment the cloth was removed, which was done in those days, the jovial wit, happier than his companions who had had more of the "feast of reason and the flow of soul" than of beef and mutton, would look up and make some totally irrelevant and irresistible remark, and having once raised the laugh, would keep an easy lead of the conversation to the end. But if they have not this art, it is highly desirable, that dinner-givers should invite their regular talker, who, like the Roman parasite, in con-sideration of a good dinner, will always be ready with a fresh topic in case of a lull in the conversation, and always be able to .ntroduce it with something smart and lively

In

There is a hotel in the city where a certain number of broken-down ecclesiastics are always "on hand" with a couple of sermons in pocket. If a clergyman is called suddenly out of town, or taken ill on the Saturday night, or hindered from preaching by any accident, he has only to send down a messenger and a reverend gentleman flies to him the sermon is at his service for the sum of one guinea, or less. Would it not answer to institute a similar establishment for the benefit of dinner-givers? The only question the cleric asks is, "High or low?" He has a sermon in each pocket, "high" in the right, "low" in the left, and produces the proper article, if he does not by mistake forget which is in which, and astound an evangelical congregation with the "symbols of the Church," or a Tractarian one with the "doctrine of election." the same way, the conviva would be always ready, in full dress, at six in the evening, and having put the question, "Serious or gay, Whig or Tory?" bring out his witticisms accordingly. We do everything now-a-days with money. Mr. Harker gives out our toasts, our servants carve and give out the wine for us. The host sits at the head or side of his table, and only smiles and talks. The next generation will make a further improvement, and the host will hire a gentleman to do even the smiling and talking, or, like the Emperor Augustus, he will just look in on his guests at the middle of dinner, ask if the entremels are good, and go to his easy-chair again in the library. Of the art of entertaining on various occasions I shall 'reat under the proper heads, and we come now to the dispensables of good society, which I take to be wealth, rank, birth, and talent.

Of birth there is little to say, because, if a man is fit