can only be acquired in early youth by diligent and constant attention: for if you accustom yourself to lounge about, to eat with your fingers, or hold your knife and fork so low that they scarcely save them from the grease; if you slovenly dirt your clothes, either omit to bow at all or else bend your body as aukwardly as Jack Carter, the plough-boy; in short, if by any such trifling neglect you acquire a habit of clownish ill-manners, you will fail to gain that respect which is only paid to true merit, when accompanied by the graces. Custom has made it necessary for you to be particularly attentive to the wants of those with whom you are in company: you should use yourselves to watch when a lady's cup is empty, that you may be ready to take it from her; or any thing has fallen down by accident, that you may with briskness pick it up; when a chair is wanting, to fetch it; or to give any assistance in your power in those trifles which occur every day; and which, by attending to, you will learn a habit of doing, as it were, mechanically; that is, without the trouble of thinking about it, in the same manner as you eat your dinner, without reflecting all the time what you are doing.--I confess, said Charles, that Colonel Armstrong has always struck me as the most agreeable man I ever saw; but he does not seem to take any peculiar trouble to behave better than other people. On the contrary, I have heard my mamma say, that he is more easy in his manners than Sir Hugh, who labours to be polite, without in the least looking like a gentleman.--That ease which you mention, said his father, is the degree of perfection which I am so solicitous to have you acquire, and which is the most difficult thing to attain, though it appears to be exercised without trouble or attention. You must therefore endeavour, by the influence of custom, to gain those natural advantages, which can only be learned in the early season of youth, and to the neglect of which it is to be ascribed, that so few men (comparatively speaking) are either polite or graceful. [Illustration]