8o Lost Courtesies. 



brought about simplicity in men's dress, and has 

 reduced oratory to mere conversation ; which has 

 given the layman the right to abuse the church, 

 and the costermonger the privilege of running 

 down royalty, has changed all this. And as we 

 have doubtless gone too far in many directions, in 

 our desire to make all men free and equal, may 

 we not have also gone too far in discarding some 

 of the refinements of equestrianism ? And is it 

 not true, and pity, that the old-fashioned outward 

 courtesy to women (for the courtesy of the heart, 

 Dieu Tnerci, always remains to us), whose decrease 

 is unhappily so apparent to-day, and among the 

 young is being supplanted by a mere camaraderie^ 

 is being swept from our midst by the same revul- 

 sion towards the extremely practical, which has 

 discarded the beruffled formalities of our forebears 

 and the high airs of equitation ? 



We have, in the East, been so imbued with an 

 imitative mania of the hunting style of England, 

 that if one rides a horse on any other than an 

 open, or indeed an all but disjointed walk, trot, or 

 canter, he is thought to be putting on airs, in 

 much the same measure as if he should dress in 

 an unwarranted extreme of fashion upon the 

 street. But if we are to ape the English, why not 

 permit on Commonwealth Avenue — or by and 

 by, we trust, the Park — what is daily seen in 

 Rotten Row ? No one who has tasted it can 



