394 POPE. 



No observer of men can have failed to notice the clumsy 

 respect which the understanding pays to elegance of 

 manner and savoir-faire, nor what an awkward sense of 

 inferiority it feels in tlie presence of an accomplished 

 worldliness. The code of society is stronger witii most 

 persons than that of Sinai, and many a man who would 

 not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor's pocket 

 would forego gi"een peas rather than use his knife as a 

 shovel. The submission with which the greater number 

 surrender their natural likings for the acquired taste of 

 what for the moment is called the World is a highly 

 curious phenomenon, and, however destructive of origi- 

 nality, is the main safeguard of society and nurse of 

 civility. Any one who has witnessed the torments of an 

 honest citizen in a foreign gallery before some hideous 

 martjTdom which he feels it his duty to admire, though 

 it be hateful to him as nightmare, may well doubt 

 whether the gi'idiron of the saint were hotter than that of 

 the sinner. It is only a gi'eat mind or a sti'ong charac- 

 ter that knows how to respect its own pi'ovincialism and 

 can dare to be in fashion with itself The bewildered 

 clown with his " Am I Giles 1 oi- am I not 1 " was but a 

 type of the average man who finds himself uniformed, 

 drilled, and keeping step, whether he will or no, with 

 the company into whioh destiny or chance has drafted 

 him, and which is marching him inexorably away from 

 everything that made him comfortable. 



The insularity of England, while it fostered pride and 

 reserve, entailed also that sensitiveness to ridicule which 

 haunts pride like an evil genius. " The English," says 

 Barclay, writing half a century before the Restoration, 

 " have for the most part grave minds and withdrawn, 

 as it were, into themselves for counsel ; they won- 

 derfully admire themselves and the manners, genius, 

 and spirit of their own nation. In salutation or in 



