The first and most obvious reflections which arise in a man who changes the city for the country, are upon the different manners of the people whom he meets with in those two different scenes of life. By manners I do not mean morals, but behaviour and good breeding as they (10) show themselves in the town and in the country. And here, in the first place, I must observe a very great revolution that has happened in this article of good breeding. Several[104] obliging deferences, condescensions, and submissions, with many outward forms and ceremonies (15) that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and distinguished themselves from the rustic part of the species--who on all occasions acted bluntly and naturally--by such a mutual complaisance and intercourse of civilities. These forms of conversation[105] by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the modish[106] world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside. Conversation, (140: 5) like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its natural good sense and beauty. At present, therefore, an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behavior (10) are the height of good breeding. The fashionable world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good breeding shows itself most where, to an ordinary eye, it appears the least. (15) [104] Various. [105] Social intercourse. [106] Fashionable. If after this we look on the people of mode in the country, we find in them the manners of the last age. They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the fashion of the polite world but the town has dropped them,[107] and are[108] nearer to the first stage of nature than to those refinements (20) which formerly reigned in the court and still prevail in the country. One may now know a man that never conversed in the world by his excess of good breeding. A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in half an hour as would serve a courtier for a week. There (25) is infinitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices' wives than in an assembly of duchesses. [107] _I.e_. the fashions, not the people in the country. [108] The subject is "town."