I wonder why. I hope I showed as much pleasure
at his praise as he did at mine; for I was glad to see how pleasantly it
moved him. After this, I talked with Ticknor and Miles, and with Mr.
Palfrey, to whom I had been introduced very long ago by George Hillard,
and had never seen him since. We looked at some autographs, of which Mr.
Milnes has two or three large volumes. I recollect a leaf from Swift's
Journal to Stella; a letter from Addison; one from Chatterton, in a most
neat and legible hand; and a characteristic sentence or two and signature
of Oliver Cromwell, written in a religious book. There were many curious
volumes in the library, but I had not time to look at them.
I liked greatly the manners of almost all,--yes, as far as I observed,--
all the people at this breakfast, and it was doubtless owing to their
being all people either of high rank or remarkable intellect, or both.
An Englishman can hardly be a gentleman, unless he enjoy one or other of
these advantages; and perhaps the surest way to give him good manners is
to make a lord of him, or rather of his grandfather or great-grandfather.
In the third generation, scarcely sooner, he will be polished into
simplicity and elegance, and his deportment will be all the better for
the homely material out of which it is wrought and refined. The Marquis
of Lansdowne, for instance, would have been a very commonplace man in the
common ranks of life; but it has done him good to be a nobleman.
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