eans elegance of manners, or good breeding. Lord Chesterfield denominates it the art of pleasing. It has also been called an artificial good nature; and indeed good nature is the foundation of true politeness, for without it art will make but a very indifferent figure, and generally defeat its own ends. Where compliance and assent, caution and candour, arise from a natural tenderness of disposition and softness of nature, as they sometimes do, they are almost always amiable, and certainly excusable; but as the effects of artifice, they must be despised. The persons who possess them are often indeed themselves dupes of their own deceit, when they imagine others are deluded by it; for excessive art always betrays itself.

A variety of excellent rules for acquiring politeness, with strictures on particular kinds of impoliteness, may be found in the Spectator, Rambler, Idler, Lounger, Mirror, and other periodical works of that kind; in Knox's Essays, and among Swift's works. Chesterfield's Art of Pleasing, and his Letters, are also worthy of perusal, provided the reader be on his guard against the insincerity and the false maxims which these books are calculated to infuse.