Which but to see is to admire,
And—oh! forgive the word—to love!
We had originally inserted here a rhapsody on Ellen’s glance, which would have occupied, as our printer assures us, three pages and a half; but, in mercy to our friends, we have erased this, and shall content ourselves with stating that we were alone for at least ten minutes, before we recollected that it was five o’clock, and that we ought to think of retiring from the solitude of Lady Mordaunt’s “At Home.[Pg 60]”
POLITENESS AND POLITESSE.
“I cannot bear a French metropolis.”—Johnson.
We have headed our article with two words which are very often, and certainly very improperly, confounded together. Nobody needs to be told that the one is from the English, the other from the French vocabulary; but there may perhaps be some who will be surprised to hear that the one expresses an English, the other a French quality.
Frown if you will, Monsieur Duclos, we must maintain that the English are the only people who have a true idea of politeness. If we are wrong, our error may be excused for the feeling which prompts it; but we believe we are right, and we will try to make our readers believe so.
The English are kind in their politeness—the French are officious in their politesse; the politeness of the English is shown in actions—the politesse of the French evaporates in sound; English politeness is always disinterested—French politesse is too often prompted by selfishness.
When we consider the various forms of these qualities, we appear to be discriminating between the rival merits of two contending beauties, who reign with equal dominion, and divide the admiration of an adoring world. There are many who prefer the ingenious delicacy of politeness, and we congratulate them on their truly English feeling; there are perhaps more who are attracted by the coquettish vivacity of politesse, and we do not envy them their French taste.
A variety of instances of both these traits must have occurred to everybody, but as everybody does not behold the shades of character through the exact medium of an editorial microscope, we will endeavour to bring out more distinctly those examples which seem to us to bear immediately on the subject.