pass. But the courtiers paid no attention to these directions and so the
determined Scot complained to the King in such convincing manner that His
Majesty issued an edict commanding everyone at Court to "keep within the
_etiquettes_." Gradually the term came to cover all the rules for correct
demeanor and deportment in court circles; and thus through the centuries
it has grown into use to describe the conventions sanctioned for the
purpose of smoothing personal contacts and developing tact and good
manners in social intercourse. With the decline of feudal courts and the
rise of empires of industry, much of the ceremony of life was discarded
for plain and less formal dealing. Trousers and coats supplanted doublets
and hose, and the change in costume was not more extreme than the change
in social ideas. The court ceased to be the arbiter of manners, though the
aristocracy of the land remained the high exemplar of good breeding.

Yet, even so courtly and materialistic a mind as Lord Chesterfield's
acknowledged a connection between manners and morality, of which latter
the courts of Europe seemed so sparing. In one of the famous "Letters to
His Son" he writes: "Moral virtues are the foundation of society in
general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and
graces, both adorn and strengthen them." Again he says: "Great merit, or
great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little
attentions, mere nothings, either done or reflected, will make you either
liked or disliked, in the general run of the world." For all the wisdom
and brilliancy of his worldly knowledge, perhaps no other writer has done
so much to bring disrepute on the "manners and graces" as Lord
Chesterfield, and this, it is charged, because he debased them so heavily
by considering them merely as the machinery of a successful career. To the
moralists, the fact that the moral standards of society in Lord
Chesterfield's day were very different from those of the present era
rather adds to the odium that has become associated with his attitude. His