MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF YESTERDAY

AND TO-DAY.

BY ONE OF THE OLD SCHOOL.

It is surely rather a strange thing that the progress of refinement of habits and customs, with all the facilities and luxuries of life which the new discoveries of science and industry are perpetually pouring in upon us, should be accompanied, in this England of ours, by a decline--not to say a decay-of manners. Not only les belles manières of old, but that touch of ceremonial which hedges in the dignity of the individual and marks his place, be he nobleman or peasant, are so rapidly becoming a thing of the past that before long they will have joined letter-writing, and other pleasant minor arts, in the limbo of old-fashioned and forgotten things.

By manners William of Wykeham no doubt meant the word in its fullest acceptation as an outward sign of inward grace, the shining of a beautiful soul through the ivory lantern' of the body, the innate nobility that translates itself in perfect courtesy, and of which there are never wanting examples, under all the accidents of time and place, through all the changeful centuries. But a plea may perhaps be made for those acquired manners, those little observances of courtesy and respect, which are so fast disappearing, and the eclipse of which must be a loss to any society or country.

In one of the delightful letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, written in 1653, she is describing to her lover a great quarrel she has had with her elder brother, who was violently opposed to Sir William's suit and anxious to promote that of some other pretender to his sister's hand. She concludes: 'We talked ourselves weary. He renounced me, and I defied him--but both in as civil language as it would permit-and parted in great anger, with the usual ceremony of a leg and a courtesy, that you would have died with laughing to see us.' Elsewhere she alludes to the 'legs and courtesies' that pass between them, showing that even among brothers and sisters there was an etiquette of manners, which in these days-when a

cursory nod morning and evening is generally considered sufficient salutation, and brothers and sisters at other times do not take much more notice of each other's presence, in the matter of etiquette, than so many sheep grazing in the same field-gives one almost the impression of reading of the inhabitants of some other planet, that an interview, even a stormy one, could not pass without the pretty preliminary and conclusion of a bow and of a courtesy !

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In a previous letter Dorothy gives us another little side-light on the manners of the time, when, speaking of a visit to a country neighbour, she says: As I came back I met a coach with some company in't that I knew, and thought myself obliged to salute. We all 'lighted and met, and I found more than I looked for by two damsels and their squires.' So, if a lady, two hundred years ago, thought herself obliged to salute the occupants of a passing carriage, it meant nothing less than all alighting into the road— and what a road!-for the observance of the ceremony. This usage may explain why, in nearly all the pictures of the time in which a carriage is introduced, the company in't' has alighted and is saluting the occupants of some other coach advancing to meet it. A last survival of this etiquette lingered in Rome until 1870; a cardinal meeting the Pope out driving had to alight and salute him. The wags had it that such an encounter was generally followed by the dismissal of the cardinal's coachman. The fine reticence of style of Dorothy's letters accords with the dignity of manners; they begin Sir,' and end your faithful friend and humble servant,' and towards the end of their long courtship: 'Dear, I am yours,' or simply 'yours.' It is only in the one letter extant, written to her husband from The Hague, that we find her beginning 'My dearest heart,' and ending 'I am my best dear's most affectionate D. T.' Her affection seldom betrays itself in a warmer phrase than when she writes describing her days at Chicksands: When I have supped I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it, when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this is not kind neither). In earnest, 'tis a pleasant place, and would be much more so to me if I had your company.' And yet she was a very Penelope of constancy, waiting seven years for her absent lover, and refusing suitor after suitor, among them Henry Cromwell, the Protector's son, and nobly keeping the word she writes in one of her letters: The wealth of the whole world, by the grace of God,

shall not tempt me to break my word with you, nor the impor tunity of all my friends I have.'

England, less fortunate than France, has no national theatre to carry on the tradition of the manners and customs of bygone days. At the Théâtre Français, the Maison de Molière' as it proudly calls itself, those traditions have been handed down in an unbroken succession; and when we sit and watch the Précieuses Ridicules or the Bourgeois Gentilhomme live again before us, independently of the play itself, we see in the dresses, deportment and manners of the actors, the very image and counterpart, not only of those of Molière and his fellow-players, but of the men and women whom he took as models for his Elmires and Valères, his Harpagons and Frosines. Taking off the hat was an action in several movements, as anyone who has taken part in private theatricals in France will remember to his cost-the exact part of the turned-up brim on the left side to be taken hold of, the circular sweep of arm and hat, bringing the latter to the front of the breast, &c. And in this mirror we see the very etiquette with which our ancestresses stood still; no lady's arms hung loosely down; the elbows clung closely to her sides, and the hands just touched each other in front of her waist. They must have done a good deal of standing on the whole, especially the younger ones, if we remember that in the presence of anyone of superior age or rank, they had to stand until bidden to sit down.

There is a scene in L'Avare where the whole company goes out to take an airing, and we see how each lady is handed out according to her rank, the hand held at full stretch aloft, in a manner which only survives now in the handing of a royal bride to and from the altar. Nor must we forget to notice the bit of by-play, when Frosine, the femme d'intrigue, coming last, holds up her hand to one of the gentlemen, who turns on his heel with a laugh; so, with an angry flounce she walks out by herself-not being of quality sufficient to be escorted.

Coming to a time nearer to our own, Jane Austen gives us more perfectly, perhaps, than any other authority, the exact picture of the manners of her day. The pompous elaboration of an earlier age has given place to a courtliness of bearing which finds expression in the simplest usages of society. Her young ladies never go with' nor even accompany' their mothers or chaperons to a ball, or into the country, or on an airing, but invariably attend them,' and there is a world of deference and

subserviency expressed in the little world. So the gentlemen always' wait upon' those, especially the ladies, whom they visit; and even timid little Fanny Price, at seventeen, has learned how, on occasion, 'to submit to being the principal lady in company, and to all the little distinctions consequent thereon.' This etiquette and the graceful dignity of the dances then in vogue, must have made a ball-room, with its measured minuets and contredanses, as couple after couple went through their parts, a scene which would be a refreshment and delight to the dizzy crowds which hustle and bump each other in the crush of a modern ball.

It is also interesting to notice, in these days when women, in more than one sense of the word, walk alone, how they were accustomed to lean upon the nearest masculine arm within their reach. Even in strolling through the gardens, when the Bertrams went to Sotherton, Edmund Bertram is made happy by Miss Crawford taking one arm whilst his cousin Fanny is leaning on the other.

A gentleman of the old school said some years ago :-' When I was young, two gentlemen meeting in the street, took off their hats and bowed to each other; a few years later, and the bow had ceased; then came a time when they merely touched the brims of their hats; and now a jerk of the chin and a little grunt— "h'm, h'm," is considered sufficient salutation between two men of quality and fashion.' The habit of remaining uncovered in the presence of ladies died hard, but it is a good many years since the late Lord D was conspicuous as the only man who always stood bare-headed in the crush-room of the Opera. Mesdames,' said an old lady, some fifty years ago, in reply to some complaints upon the changes in men's manners, vous êtes descendues de votre piédestal le jour où vous avez permis aux messieurs de fumer devant vous.' She little thought that in the days of the granddaughters of the women whom she was upbraiding, the smoking-room would be common to both sexes, and the very idea of standing on a pedestal almost a subject of derision.

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If we may judge by the courteous bearing and exquisite urbanity of many of the old people who were ornaments to society some twenty years ago, we should be tempted to say that manners must have been at their best in the first quarter of this century; unless we are to think that the courtliness which charmed us was one of the virtues of old age, like the greater

indulgence and kindliness, and other fruits of the experiences of life, which are among the attributes of the old. It is, alas! more likely that their polished manners were the survival of habits acquired in youth, and that there is but little hope that the manners of the present generation will-like wine-improve as they get older.

One boisterous day last winter, some ladies in Paris were complaining of the unpleasantness of getting about, and that men were not as obliging as might be wished in the matter of giving way in tramcars, &c. 'Well, I always do,' said a gentleman present. Oh, but you are eighty years of age,' was the instant reply, with a smile and little bow of graceful homage.

It once happened to the writer to be present, within the same fortnight, at a giving of prizes at a village flower-show, and at an important college in a great northern town. In the first instance, the villagers shambled up awkwardly enough to receive their awards at the hands of the charming lady who distributed them ; but then, as, one after another, they expressed their acknowledgments by the time-honoured salute of touching their heads, some doing it with military precision, others with rather a grand wave of the hand, while others again pulled their forelock, the trifling ceremony, elementary as it was, repeated thirty or forty times, had something impressive and almost touching-as old as the hills, as universal as the world, one felt it to be-in its fine significance of humbling the head in token of deference, submission, or thanks. In the second case, the progress of the successful candidates from their places to the platform and back again was altogether deplorable; and, as the diplomas passed from the hands of the President into theirs, the young ladies and young gentlemen seemed unable to make any other sign of acknowledgment than a kind of jerky nod; one could not but wonder why, among the acquirements for which they were being rewarded, had not been included the simple and most advantageous art of walking a few steps with ease, and making a bow or a courtesy, according to their sex.

No other European country is quite so badly off as we are in this respect the universality of military service, for one thing, leaves behind it a certain aptitude for disciplined movements and falling into line when occasion requires, which would make such a fiasco impossible, if one may say so without treason to the dignity of Parliament, as was that progress of the Members of