FRIENDSHIP. YOUNG persons have commonly an unguarded frankness about them, which makes them the easy prey and bubbles of the artful and the experienced; they look upon every knave or fool who tells them that he is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of stimulated friendship with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their loss, often to their ruin. Beware of these proffered friendships. Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments, but not with confidence. Do not suppose that people become friends at first sight, or even upon a short acquaintance. Real friendship is a slow grower; and never thrives unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit. There is another kind of nomiaal friendship among young people, which is warm for the time, but luckily of short duration. This friendship is hastily produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the same course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, truly! and well cemented by drunkenness and lewdness. It should rather be called a conspiracy against morals and good manners, and be punished as such by the civil magistrate. However, they have the impudence, and the folly, to call this confederacy a friendship. They lend one another money, for bad purposes; they engage in quarrels, offensive and defensive, for their accomplices; they tell one another all they know, and often more too: when, on a sudden, some accident disperses them, and they think no more of each other, unless it be to betray and laugh at their imprudent confidence. When a man uses strong protestations or oaths to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so probable that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he deceives you, and is highly interested in making you believe it, or else he would not take so much pains. Remember to make a great difference between companions and friends; for a very complaisant and agreeable companion may, and often does, prove a very improper and a very dangerous friend. People will, in a great degree, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb, which says, very justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.' One may fairly suppose, that a man who makes a knave, or a fool his friend, has something very bad to do or to conceal. But, at the same time that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occasion to make either of them your enernies, wantonly and unprovoked; for they are numerous bodies; and I would rather choose a secure neutrality, than an alliance or war with either of them. You may be declared enemy to their vices and follies, without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship. Have a real reserve with almost every body; and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody; for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous Few people find the true medium: many are ridicuously mysterious and reserved upon trifles; and many imprudently communicative of all they know, not to be so. GOOD BREEDING. Good breeding has been very justly defined to be the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them. Good breeding cannot be attended to too soon or too much; it must be acquired while young, or it is never quite easy; and, if it is acquired young, will always last and be habitual. Horace says, Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem testa diu: to show the advantage of giving young people good habits and impressions in their youth. Good breeding alone can prepossess people in our favour at first sight; more time being necessary to discover greater talents. Good breeding, however, does not consist in low bows and formal ceremony; but in an easy, civil, and respectful behaviour. Indeed, good sense in many cases must determine good breeding; for what will be civil at one tine, and to one person, would be rude at another time, and to another person: there are, however, some general rules of good breeding. As for example: To answer only Yes, or No, to any person, without adding Sir, My Lord, or Madam, (as it may happen,) is always extremely rude; and it is equally so not to give proper attention and a civil answer when spoken to: such behaviour convinces the person who is speaking to us, that we despise him, and do not think him worthy of our attention or an answer. A well bred person will take care to answer with complaisance when he is spoken to; will place him self at the lower end of the table, unless bid to go higher; will first drink to the lady of the house, and then to the master; he will not eat awkwardly, or dirtily, nor sit when others stand; and he will do all this with an air of complaisance, and not with a grave ill-natured look, as if he did it all unwillingly. There is nothing more difficult to attain, or so necessary to possess, as perfect good breeding, which is equally inconsistent with a stiff formality, an impertinent forwardness, and an awkward bashfulness. A little ceremony is sometimes necessary; a certain degree of firmness is absolutely so; and an outward modesty is extremely becoming. : Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value; but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their lustre and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. What a number of sins does the cheerful, easy, good breeding of the French frequently cover! My Lord Bacon says, "That a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.' It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of Merit, and smooths the way for it. A man of goed breeding should be acquainted with the forms and particular customs of courts. At Vienna, men always make curtseys, instead of bows, to the emperor: in France, nobody bows to the king, or kisses his hand; but in Spain and England, bows are made, and hands are kissed. Thus every court has some peculiarity, which those who visit them ought previously to inform themselves of, to avoid blunders and awkwardness. Very few, scarcely any, are wanting in the respect which they should show to those whom they acknowledge to be infinitely their superiors. The man of fashion, and of the world, expresses it in its fullest extent; but naturally, easily, and without concern; whereas a man who is not used to keep good company, expresses it awkwardly; one sees that he is not used to it, and that it costs him a great deal: but I never saw the worst bred man living guilty of lolling, whistling, scratching his head, and such like indecencies, in company that he respected. In such companies, therefore, the only point to be attended to is, to show that respect which every body means to show, in an easy, unembarrassed, and graceful manner. In mixed companies, whoever is admitted to make part of them, is, for the time at least, supposed to be upon a footing of equality with the rest; and, consequently, every one claims, and very justly, every mark of civility and good breeding. Ease is allowed, but carelessness and negligence are strictly forbidden. If a man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or frivolously, it is worse than rudeness, it is brutality, to show him, by a manifest inattention to what he says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and not worth hearing. It is much worse so with regard to women; who, of whatever rank they are, are entitled, in consideration of their sex, not only to an attentive, but an officious, good breeding from men. Their little wants, likings, dislikes, preferences, antipathies, fancies, whims, and even impertinences, must be officiously attended to, flattered, and, if possible, guessed at and anticipated by a wellbred man. You must never usurp to yourself those conveniences and agremens which are of common right; such as the best places, the best |