Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius
or of love,--now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a
rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details
adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a
depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communicable: men catch
them from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons
she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage: and, in real life,
Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine manners,
which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage
of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they
have learned into a mode.

The power of manners is incessant,--an element as unconcealable as
fire. The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a
republic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist their
influence. There are certain manners which are learned in good society,
of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be
considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth,
or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the
mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of
earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess. We send
girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the
riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into
acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where
they might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman
of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their
belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but
when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront her, and
recover their self-possession.