[101] Addison, commenting in his time on the vulgarising influence of the capital, says, “If you want to know a man who has seen the world, you will know him by his deficiency in those characters which seem to belong to good society.” [102] They were resigning their diet of milk and honey, and taking to sloe-leaves and toast. The reason brought back on me Spain, Greece, and all the changelings. Ask a Turk why he does anything? he answers _Adet-dur_--“It is the custom.” CHAPTER X. EXCURSION IN THE STRAITS.--CADIZ POLITENESS. The demeanour of men towards women could not fail to engage attention in the birthplace of chivalry, as among the orientals men and women salute in the same manner. It was some time before I could have said, “The women in Spain do not curtsey;” yet I should have been shocked to see a Spanish lady do so. I have been looking over a book entitled, “Travels in the land of Monkeys,” meaning England and France. It is uncertain whether the work is originally Spanish or Italian. I am satisfied that it is not Spanish, for it does not notice what a Spaniard could not have failed to set down in those lands--a different salutation for males and females. Can one imagine a Roman matron curtseying? A bobbing up and down of the body, a salutation with the legs, and no inclination of the head? Surely it was invented for quadrupeds. It has only a foreign name in English, and that too absurd to have been applied to the antic in its native tongue. A courtesy (courtoisie) is a thing courteous; and a curtsey was a step in a French dance. The ladies of Spain can dance, but cannot curtsey.[103] To salute--to reverence, requires that the noble parts of the body should be called into play. There is nothing so good that it may not be perverted, and the best then becomes the worst. Curtseying is now respectable because men have taken to nodding, and poking their hat with the forefinger. How great would their surprise be, if they heard that the dominion of the world may hinge on a form of salutation. “Language,”. said Ali, “is the mirror of the understanding; manners, of the man.” Bacon tells us that “Reason may affect the judgment, interest the conduct, but manners alone touch the heart.” It is by manners that the teaching of the child begins before he has learnt his letters. Manners are the curb on the passions. They are the guide of life from the cradle to the tomb, and by them you judge of the nation as well as of the man. A people’s history is written in a salutation. Alwakide, in the early days of Islam, records as an event, that a man receiving sentence of death had not saluted the judge.