But of all offences against English manners which a man can commit, the three following are the greatest:--to put his knife to his mouth instead of his fork; to take up sugar or asparagus with his fingers; or, above all, to spit anywhere in a room. These are certainly laudable prohibitions, and well-bred people of all countries avoid such practices,--though even on these points manners alter greatly; for Marshal Richelieu detected an adventurer who passed himself off for a man of rank, by the single circumstance of his taking up olives with his fork and not with his fingers. The ridiculous thing is the amazing importance which is here attached to them. The last-named crime is so pedantically proscribed in England, that you might seek through all London in vain to find such a piece of furniture as a spitting-box. A Dutchman, who was very uncomfortable for the want of one, declared with great indignation, that an Englishman's only spitting-box was his stomach. These things are, I repeat, more than trivial, but the most important rules of behaviour in foreign countries almost always regard trivialities. Had I, for example, to give a few universal rules to a young traveller, I should seriously counsel him thus:--In Naples, treat the people brutally; in Rome, be natural; in Austria, don't talk politics; in France, give yourself no airs; in Germany, a great many; and in England, don't spit. With these rules, the young man would get on very well. What one must justly admire is the well-adapted arrangement of every thing belonging to the economy of life and of all public establishments in England, as well as the systematical rigour with which what has once been determined on is unalterably followed up. In Germany, all good institutions soon fall asleep, and new brooms alone sweep clean; here it is quite otherwise. On the other hand, every thing is not required of the same person, but exactly so much, and no more, as falls within his department. The treatment of servants is as excellent as their performance of their duties. Each has his prescribed field of activity; in which, however, the strictest and most punctual execution of orders is required of him, and in any case of neglect the master knows whom he has to call to account. At the same time, the servants enjoy a reasonable freedom, and have certain portions of time allotted to them, which their master carefully respects. The whole treatment of the serving classes is much more decorous, and combined with more 'égards,' than with us; but then they are so entirely excluded from all familiarity, and such profound respect is exacted from them, that they appear to be considered rather as machines than as beings of the same order. This, and their high wages, are no doubt the causes that the servants really possess more external dignity than any other class in England, relatively to their station.