5. A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment, to the completion of this man of the world; and it is a material deputy which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty when that of wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of the class; and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular.

6. The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men of taste. The association of these

5. What does E. mean by the phrase, "man of the world"? What is more essential to the gentleman than money, and how does it manifest itself in the aristocrat and in the man of the people? What qualities make a boy a leader among boys? Is a leader always a popular boy?

Cf. the last sentence with the fourth sentence of paragraph 4. Can one cultivate "a broad sympathy"?

6. Is it easy to be rude to a courteous person? How, then, are fine manners "formidable"? Why is it better policy to meet a rude person courteously? How do good manners facilitate schoollife? What hindrances do they remove? What common schoolrules would be unnecessary if the manners of all were perfect ? Why

masters with each other, and with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By swift consent everything superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of defense to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.

7. There exists a strict relation between the class of power and the exclusive and polished circles. The last would the rule of turning to the right still be necessary? tion has fashion with good manners? Cf. the last sentence of this paragraph. Are fashionable manners and good manners always the same?

What connec

7. Why should the "exclusive circles" be interested in the "class of power"? How does E. illustrate this? Is one circle any more "exclusive" than another? What are the greatest men of to-day doing? Illustrate. Why does fashion often care less for the great than for their children? How would a descendant of Shakespeare be treated? Why need the city be recruited from the country? Cf. Self-Reliance, 34, "A sturdy lad," etc.

are always filled or filling from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain; doubtless with the feeling that fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed; it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great; it is a hall of the past. It usually sets its face against the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls, they are absent in the field; they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day.

8. Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These mutual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority by the strong hand and kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life and is one of the estates of the realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity when I see its work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters that we should not look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and nature. We think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion, for example; yet come from year to year, and see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where, too, it has not the least countenance from the law of the land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a

8. What is the derivation of the word aristocracy? Of what qualities in men are aristocracy and fashion results? Illustrate the third sentence by the life of Cromwell. Is it a boy's occupation or his interests that have to do with his being a gentleman ? Why cannot an agreeable society be formed of all the boys living on the same street? What is meant by a man's "intrinsic rank"? Is there any connection between the intrinsic value of a book and its price? In what kind of society will a boy find a place? is the best way for him to enter good society ?

What

college-class, a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a religious convention; the persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its members will not in the year meet again. Each returns to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure, or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician out who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris by the purity of their tournure.

9. To say what good of fashion we can, - it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; to exclude and mystify pretenders, and send them into everlasting "Coventry," is its delight. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit, even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our

9. Why does the habit of appealing to his own sense of propriety make a boy more gentlemanly? Would it be better to have a definite code of manners for all occasions? What has a strong will to do with good manners? Define self-reliance. Does the self

reliant man ever care for the advice of others? What qualities are always in fashion? What kind of "self-content" is pleasing, and What kind of deference is not agreeable?

what kind is displeasing? What is meant by a man's carrying "his whole sphere" with him? Ought a boy's" whole sphere" to be the same at home and in school ?