The principle we have indicated, applies to all matters of human concern, the simplest as well as the most complicated. Let us first take a familiar instance from ordinary life. In the common intercourse of society we are all painfully conscious of the dominion of the mechanical, prescribing manner, proscribing nature. In the Siberian atmosphere of most social assemblies the soul congeals. The tendency to isolation of mind from mind, and heart from heart, is most apparent in the contrivances by which society brings its members bodily together—the formal politeness excluding the courtesy it mimics. Hypocrisy, artifice, non-expression of the reality in persons—these are apt to be the characteristics of that dreary solitude which passes under the exquisitely ironical appellation of “good society.” The universal destiny of men and women who engage in this game of fashion as the business of life, is frivolity or ennui. They either fritter to pieces or are bored to death. Nothing so completely wastes away the vitality of the mind, and converts a person into a puppet, as this substitution of the verb “to appear,” for the verb “to be.” Whatever is graceful in manner, carriage and conversation, is natural; but the art of politeness, as commonly practiced, is employed to deaden rather than develop nature, from its ambition to reduce the finer instincts to mechanical forms. In the very term of gentleman there is something exceedingly winning and beautiful, expressing as it does a fine union of intelligence and courtesy; but in genteel society the word too often means nothing more than foppish emptiness, and Sir Philip Sidney gives way to Beau Nash. Even here, however, the moment a person with a genius for society appears, it is curious to see how quickly the different elements are fused together, by a few flashes of genuine social inspiration. Convention is at once abolished, each heart finds a tongue, giggling turns into merriment, conversation occurs and prattle ceases, and a party is really organized. A little sincerity of this sort in social intercourse would infinitely beautify life.