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HE firft and moft obvious Reflexions which arife in a Man who changes the

City for the Country, are upon the different Manners of the People whom he meets with in those two different Scenes of Life. By Manners I do not mean Morals, but Behaviour and Good-breeding as they fhow themselves in the Town and in the Country.

AND here, in the first place, I must observe a very great Revolution that has happened in this Article of Good-breeding. Several obliging Deferences, Condefcenfions and Submiffions, with many outward Forms and Ceremonies that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer Part of Mankind, who lived in Courts and Cities, and diftinguifhed themselves from the Ruf

tick part of the Species (who on all Occafions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual Complaifance and Intercourfe of Civilities. Thefe Forms of Converfation by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the modifh World found too great a Constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them afide. Conversation, like the Romish Religion, was fo encumbered with Show and Ceremony, that it ftood in need of a Reformation to retrench its Superfluities, and restore it to its natural good Sense and Beauty. At present therefore an unconstrained Carriage, and a certain Opennefs of Behaviour, are the height of Good-breeding. The fashionable World is grown free and easy; our Manners fit more loofe upon us: Nothing is fo modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good-breeding fhews itself moft, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.

IF after this we look on the People of Mode in the Country, we find in them the Manners of the laft Age. They have no fooner fetched themselves up to the Fashion of the polite World, but the Town has dropped them, and are nearer to the firft State of Nature than to those Refinements which formerly reigned in the Court, and still prevail in the Country. One may now know a Man that never conversed in the World, by his Excess

of Good-breeding. A polite Country 'Squire shall make you as many Bows in half an Hour, as would ferve a Courtier for a Week. There is infinitely more to do about Place and Precedency in a Meeting of Justices Wives, than in an Affembly of Dutcheffes.

THIS Rural Politeness is very troublesome to a Man of my Temper, who generally take the Chair that is next me, and walk first or last, in the Front or in the Rear, as Chance directs. I have known my Friend Sir ROGER'S Dinner almoft cold before the Company could adjust the Ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to fit down; and have heartily pitied my old Friend, when I have seen him forced to pick and cull his Guests, as they fat at the feveral Parts of his Table, that he might drink their Healths according to their respective Ranks and Qualities. Honeft Will Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with Ceremony, gives me abundance of Trouble in this Particular. Though he has been fishing all the Morning, he will not help himself at Dinner 'till I am ferved. When we are going out of the Hall, he runs behind me; and laft Night, as we were walking in the Fields, stopped fhort at a Stile 'till I came up to it, and upon my making Signs to him to get over, told me, with a

ferious Smile, that fure I believed they had no Manners in the Country.

THERE has happened another Revolution in the Point of Good-breeding, which relates to the Conversation among Men of Mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first Distinctions of a wellbred Man, to exprefs every thing that had the most remote Appearance of being obfcene, in modeft Terms and distant Phrases; whilft the Clown, who had no fuch Delicacy of Conception and Expreffion, clothed his Ideas in thofe plain homely Terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of Good-manners was perhaps carried to an Excess, fo as to make Conversation too stiff, formal, and precise for which Reason (as Hypocrify in one Age is generally fucceeded by Atheism in another) Conversation is in a great measure relapsed into the first Extreme; so that at present several of our Men of the Town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse uncivilized Words in our Language, and utter themselves often in fuch a manner as a Clown would blush to hear.

THIS infamous Piece of Good-breeding, which reigns among the Coxcombs of the Town, has not yet made its way into the Country; and as it is

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impoffible for fuch an irrational way of Converfation to last long among a People that make any Profeffion of Religion, or Show of Modefty, if the Country Gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their Good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a Parcel of lewd Clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like Men of Wit and Pleasure.

AS the two Points of Good-breeding which I have hitherto infifted upon, regard Behaviour and Conversation, there is a third which turns upon Drefs. In this too the Country are very much behind-hand. The Rural Beaus are not yet got out of the Fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the Country in red Coats and laced Hats, while the Women in many Parts are still trying to outvie one another in the Height of their Head-dreffes.

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