A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

who have enjoyed advantages for the cultivation of good-manners, and who duly estimate its importance, one caution is necessary. Those, who never have had such habits formed in youth, are under disadvantages, which no benevolence of temper can remedy. They may often violate the tastes and feelings of others, not from a want of proper regard for them, but from ignorance of custom, or want of habit, or abstraction of mind, or from other causes, which demand forbearance and sympathy, rather than displeasure. An ability to bear patiently with defects in manners, and to make candid and considerate allowance for a want of advantages, or for peculiarities in mental habits, is one mark of the benevolence of real good-breeding. The advocates of monarchical and aristocratic institutions, have always had great plausibility given to their views, by the seeming tendencies to insubordination and bad-manners, of our institutions. And it has been too indiscriminately conceded, by the defenders of the latter, that such are these tendencies, and that the offensive points, in American manners, are the necessary result of democratic principles. But it is believed, that both facts and reasoning are in opposition to this opinion. The following extract from the work of De Tocqueville, exhibits the opinion of an impartial observer, when comparing American manners with those of the English, who are confessedly the most aristocratic of all people. He previously remarks on the tendency of aristocracy to make men more sympathizing with persons of their own peculiar class, and less so towards those of lower degree; and he then contrasts American manners with the English, claiming that the Americans are much the most affable, mild, and social. "In America, where the privileges of birth never existed, and where riches confer no peculiar rights on their possessors, men acquainted with each other are very ready to frequent the same places, and find neither peril nor advantage in the free interchange of their thoughts. If they meet, by accident, they neither seek nor avoid intercourse; their manner is therefore natural, frank, and open." "If their demeanor is often cold and serious, it