So little are
these people susceptible of delicacy, propriety, and decency, that they
do not even use the words in the sense we do, nor have they any others
expressive of the same meaning.
But if they be deficient in the external forms of politeness, they are
infinitely more so in that politeness which may be called mental. The
simple and unerring rule of never preferring one's self, is to them more
difficult of comprehension than the most difficult problem in Euclid: in
small things as well as great, their own interest, their own
gratification, is their leading principle; and the cold flexibility which
enables them to clothe this selfish system in "fair forms," is what they
call politeness.
My ideas on this subject are not recent, but they occurred to me with
additional force on the perusal of Mad. de B____'s letter. The behaviour
of some of the poorest and least informed class of our countrymen forms a
striking contrast with that of the people who arrested her, and even her
own friends: the unaffected attention of the one, and the brutality and
neglect of the other, are, perhaps, more just examples of English and
French manners than you may have hitherto imagined. I do not, however,
pretend to say that the latter are all gross and brutal, but I am myself
convinced that, generally speaking, they are an unfeeling people.
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