1827.] Etiquette. 133 



nothing : accordingly, the court of Rome is the head-quarters of cere- 

 monial. Voltaire was mistaken when he said, " Cette important affmre 

 du punctilio, qui constitue la grandeur des Romaines modernes, 

 cette science du nombre des pas qu'on. doit faire, pour reconduire un 

 monsignore^ &c. &c. Commence ci baisser et les caudataires des Car- 

 dinaux se plaignent que tout annonce la decadence" Sometimes the 

 permanence of usages and etiquettes affords a piquant contrast between 

 the sign and the thing signified. The absurd and preposterous wigs, still 

 of necessity worn by our protestant bishops, are made in imitation of the 

 shaven head of a catholic priest ; and it may amuse a philosophical 

 humourist to listen to a fierce anti- catholic tirade thundered forth from 

 the pulpit, or in the house, from beneath the very flag and banner of 

 Popery and Babylonish superstition. Something similar may likewise 

 occur to the imagination, when the eye falls upon a court sword. Swords 

 are a part of court dress, simply because they were once worn on all occa- 

 sions ; and they were so worn, because in rude times no man was safc 

 but when his weapon was within his reach. Now they are not only 

 unnecessary, but a solecism and a contradiction. The courtier, the 

 most tame and submissive of God's creatures, is distinguished by his 

 military geer ; and he cannot approach his sovereign without a weapon, 

 to draw which within the precints of the palace is an heinous offence. 

 In the marriage ring there is often concealed a cruel irony. In the 

 primitive ages, the king's signet or ring was a very natural warrant for the 

 person bearing it, that he acted by royal command. Hence rings became 

 the types of authority ; and they were introduced into the ceremonies of 

 investiture, m as an emblem of power. They were part of the distinction 

 of a Roman knight ; and to this day they are employed in the ceremony 

 of creating doctors in our universities. The use of the ring in marriage, 

 is as a type of the wife's authority in the household, and of her right to a 

 community of goods, and not, as is often imagined, a mark of subser- 

 viency, and indenture to her husband. 



The more completely a nation is free, the fewer and the more simple 

 are its ceremonies ; but then, on the other hand, the more decided the 

 demarkation of ranks in society, the less pertinacious are the qualified in 

 asserting their pride of place. An English nobleman is infinitely more 

 haughty and distant in his intercourse with his inferiors, than a French- 

 man of equal rank ; because the law of England, having put all ranks 

 on a footing of civil equality, the lower classes are apt to forget their 

 distance, when not reminded of it by the repulsive manners of those 

 above them. The intercourse between master and servant in France is 

 generally remarkable for amiability ; their tutoyer being less a mark of 

 hauteur, than of familiarity and affection. On the same account, there 

 reigns, all the world over, a greater jealousy between ranks but little 

 separated, than between the members of the two extremes of the aris- 

 tocratic scale; of which the eternal squabble for the " monseignenr" in 

 France, is a pregnant example. " Why," said one noble to another, a 

 shade his superior, " why, when I call you monseigneur, do you call me 

 monsieur ; and, when I call you monsieur, why do you call me mon- 

 seigneur?" " Any thing," replied the other, " but equality." Excessive 

 punctilio always, indeed, implies this sort of jealousy. A plain, untitled 

 gentleman, is never more forcibly reminded of the deference expected from 

 him, than when addressed by the noble, with an emphaticand ceremoni- 

 ous " Mr." Among equals, it is plain Devonshire, Lansdo \vne, Bedford ; 



