spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them
off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough, with eight
hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of free-born eyes,
but fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers of
reserve: and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael,[420] was
wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all
expression. But emperors and rich men are by no means the most
skillful masters of good manners. No rent roll nor army-list can
dignify skulking and dissimulations: and the first point of courtesy
must always be truth, as really all forms of good-breeding point that
way.

12. I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's[421] translation,
Montaigne's[422] account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with
nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time.
His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an
event of some consequence. Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to
whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty
to himself and to civilization. When he leaves any house in which he
has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung
up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.

13. The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the
points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is deference.
I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer
a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. Let the
incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man
teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have
a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred
sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and