" And so indeed Nature
does make SOME gentlemen--a few here and there. But Art makes most.
Good birth, that is, good handsome well-formed fathers and mothers, nice
cleanly nursery-maids, good meals, good physicians, good education,
few cares, pleasant easy habits of life, and luxuries not too great
or enervating, but only refining--a course of these going on for a few
generations are the best gentleman-makers in the world, and beat Nature
hollow.
If, respected Madam, you say that there is something BETTER than
gentility in this wicked world, and that honesty and personal wealth are
more valuable than all the politeness and high-breeding that ever wore
red-heeled pumps, knights' spurs, or Hoby's boots, Titmarsh for one is
never going to say you nay. If you even go so far as to say that the
very existence of this super-genteel society among us, from the slavish
respect that we pay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we attempt
to imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy honesty of
intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natural affections and
honest, harmless usages, and so does a great deal more harm than it is
possible it can do good by its example--perhaps, Madam, you speak with
some sort of reason.
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