peasant, such as was the father of Carlyle, the breaches of
manners which are often seen in fashionable society would never
occur. They would appear perfectly impossible to a person who had
a really good heart and a gentle nature. The manners of a young
man of fashion who keeps his hat on when speaking to a lady, who
would smoke in her face, and would appear indifferent to her
comfort at a supper-table, who would be contradictory and
neglectful--such manners would have been impossible to Thomas or
John Carlyle, reared as they were in the humblest poverty. It was
the "London swell" who dared to be rude in their day as now.

But this impertinence and arrogance of fashion should not prevent
the son of a Scotch peasant from acquiring, or attempting to
acquire, the conventional habits and manners of a gentleman. If he
have already the grace of high culture, he should seek to add to
it the knowledge of social laws, which will render him an
agreeable person to be met in society. He must learn how to write
a graceful note, and to answer his invitations promptly; he must
learn the etiquette of dress and of leaving cards; he must learn
how to eat his dinner gracefully, and, even if he sees in good
society men of external polish guilty of a rudeness which would
have shocked the man who in the Scotch Highlands fed and milked
the cows, he still must not forget that society demands something
which was not found in the farm-yard. Carlyle, himself the
greatest radical and democrat in the world, found that life at
Craigenputtock would not do all for him, that he must go to London
and Edinburgh to rub off his solitary neglect of manners, and
strive to be like other people. On the other band, the Queen of
England has just refused to receive the Duke of Marlborough
because he notoriously ill-treated the best of wives, and had