By virtues, I mean acts which are performed with a certain difficulty, under the sense of responsibility to duty, under the self-discipline of right principle; by qualities, I mean what is spontaneous. Constitutional good qualities are spontaneous. Such as natural sweetness of temper--natural delicacy of feeling--natural intrepidity; others are the result of habit, and end by being spontaneous--by being a second nature: justly are habits called so. Gentleness of tone and manner--attention to conventional proprieties--to people's little wants and feelings--are of these. This same politeness being a sort of summary of such, I will end this little didactic digression by advising all those who have the rearing of the young in their hands, carefully to form them in matters of this description, so that they shall attain _habits_--so that the delicacy of their perceptions, the gentleness of their tones and gestures, the propriety of their dress, the politeness of their manners, shall become spontaneous acts, done without reference to self, as things of course. By which means, not only much that is disagreeable to their is avoided, and much that is amiable attained, but a great deal of reference to self is in after life escaped; and temptations to the faults of vanity--pride--envious comparisons with our neighbors, and the feebleness of self-distrust very considerably diminished. And so, to return, the politeness of the general and Mrs. Melwyn led to this result, the leaving Miss Arnold undisturbed to make her reflections and her observations, before commencing the task which Mrs. Melwyn, for the last time, undertook for her, of reading the newspaper and playing the hit. Lettice could not help feeling rejoiced to be spared this sort of public exhibition of her powers, till she was in a slight degree better acquainted with her ground; and she was glad to know, without being directly told, what it was customary to do in these respects. But in every other point of view, she had better, perhaps, have been reader than listener. For, if she gained a lesson as to the routine to be followed, she paid for it by receiving at the same time, a considerably alarming impression of the general's ways of proceeding. "Shall I read the newspaper this evening?" began Mrs. Melwyn, timidly. "I don't care if you do," roughly. Polite men, be it observed, _en passant_, do not at all make it a rule to exercise that habit to their wives. The wife is a thing apart from the rest of the world, out of the category of such proprieties. To be rude to his wife is no impeachment of a man's gentleman-like manners at all. "Is there any thing worth reading in it?" "I am sure I don't know what you will think worth reading. Shall I begin with the leading article?" "What is it all about?" "I am sure I can't say." "Can't you look?" "The sugar question, I think." "Well, what has the fool to say about that?"