which one ought to be ashamed of; keep but clear of thein, and you may go anywhere without fear or concern. I have known some people, who, from feeling the pain and inconveniences of this mauvaise honte, have rushed into the other extreme, and turned impudent, as cowards sometimes grow desperate from the excess of danger; but this too is carefully to be avoided, there being nothing more generally shocking than impudence. The medium between these two extremes marks out the well-bred man; he feels himself firm and easy in all companies; is modest without being bashful, and steady without being impudent; if he is a stranger, he observes, with care, the manners and ways of the people most esteemed at that place, and conforms to them with complaisance."

Flattery is always in bad taste. If you say more in a person's praise than is deserved, you not only say what is false, but you make others doubt the wisdom of your judgment. Open, palpable flattery will be regarded by those to whom it is addressed as an insult. In your intercourse with ladies, you will find that the delicate compliment of seeking their society, showing your pleasure in it, and choosing for subjects of conversation, other themes than the weather, dress, or the opera, will be more appreciated by women of sense, than the more awkward compliment of open words or gestures of admiration.

Never imitate the eccentricities of other men, even though those men have the highest genius to excuse their oddities. Eccentricity is, at the best, in bad taste; but an imitation of it-second hand oddity-is detestable.

Never feign abstraction in society. If you have matters of importance which really occupy your mind, and prevent you from paying attention to the proper etiquette of society, stay at home till your mind is less preoccupied. Chesterfield says:

"What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to absence, from that intense thought which the things they were investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company. However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform, in some degree, to their weakness, instead of

manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill-spoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that constant attention about you, which flatters every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or, at least, his ill will. For instance: most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses; they have their aversions and their likings to such or such things; so that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese, (which are common antipathies,) or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted, and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, shows him that he is, at least, an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him, possibly, more your friend than a more important service would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are necessary, and, by the custom of the world, in some measure due, according to the laws of good breeding."

In giving an entertainment to your friends, while you avoid extravagant expenditure, it is your duty to place before them the best your purse will permit you to purchase, and be sure you have plenty. Abundance without superfluity, and good quality without extravagance, are your best rules for an entertainment.

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If, by the introduction of a friend, by a mistake, or any other way, your enemy, or a man to whom you have the strongest personal dislike, is under your roof, or at your table, as a guest, hospitality and good breeding both require you to treat him with the same frank courtesy which you extend to your other guests; though you need make no violent protestations of friendship, and are not required to make any advances towards him after he ceases to be your guest.

In giving a dinner party, invite only as many guests as you can seat comfortably at your table. If you have two tables, have them precisely alike, or, rest assured, you will offend those friends whom you place at what they judge to be the inferior table. Above all, avoid having little tables placed in the corners of the room, when there is a large table. At some houses in Paris it is a fashion to set the dining room entirely with small tables, which will accommodate comfortably three or four people, and such parties are very merry, very sociable and pleasant, if four congenial people are around each table; but it is a very dull fashion, if you are not sure of the congeniality of each quartette of guests.

If you lose your fortune or position in society, it is wiser to retire from the world of fashion than to wait for that world to bow you out.

If you are poor, but welcome in society on account of your family or talents, avoid the error which the young are most apt to fall into, that of living beyond your

means.

The advice of Polonius to Laertes is as excellent in the present day, as it was in Shakspeare's time :

"Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel:
But do not dull thy palm with entertainments
Of each new hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,

Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

It is by no means desirable to be always engaged in the serious pursuits of life. Take time for pleasure, and you will find your work progresses faster for some recreation. Lord Chesterfield says:

"I do not regret the time that I passed in pleasures; they were seasonable; they were the pleasures of youth, and I enjoyed them while young. If I had not, I should probably have overvalued them now, as we are very apt to do what we do not know; but knowing them as I do, I know their real value, and how much they are generally overrated. Nor do I regret the time that I have passed