Here, too, amidst the younger and fresher forms, beauties of former days still shone in the dignity of their manners, and of that air and carriage which the fashion of their time had rendered a portion of themselves; which lent a grace to their every movement, and might well have afforded a school of manners and propriety of outward bearing for the young who mingled with them--in counteraction of the oblivion and extermination of all manners, which the prevailing system of the _soi-disant_ members of _ton_ would have enforced. Such, at least, were the external features of an old-fashioned assembly--in its moral character the advantages were no less. Its honest and avowed purpose was the interchange of those courtesies which render life agreeable, and the preservation of those general guards in society which, as checks to profligacy, are more useful than abstract theories of ethics, or codes of moral laws. People, unless lost, sin not so blindly in mixed communities--one individual forms a restraint on the others--children stand in awe of parents, and these, in their turn, acknowledge a wholesome control in the presence of their offspring--the good are a terror to the evil (for an alloy will ever exist); while the one and the other mutually afford examples of imitation, or beacons of danger to be avoided, which every individual may, if there be the will, turn to profit, in the correction of some temper, the curbing of some excess, the chastening of some wish, or the abandonment of some folly. The more intimate associations in life are not here spoken of; but these in characters of the same description as Lady Feuillemerte's, would doubtless be founded on the same basis, and have the same objects in view; for whether in the cherishing of natural affections, the formation of those friendships which spring up in the domestic circle, the cultivation and exercise of talents which give a charm to existence, or the acquirement of more important attainments, the system which holds out examples, and affords restraint, will ever be best.