And here, in the first place, I must observe a very great Revolution that has happen’d in this Article of Good Breeding.  Several obliging Deferences, Condescensions and Submissions, with many outward Forms and Ceremonies 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 Rustick 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 by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the Modish World found too great a Constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside.  Conversation, 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 Behaviour, are the Height of Good Breeding.  The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us:  Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence.  In a word, Good Breeding shews it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.

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, and are nearer to the first State of Nature than to those Refinements which formerly reign’d 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 is infinitely more to do about Place and Precedency in a Meeting of Justices Wives, than in an Assembly of Dutchesses.

This Rural Politeness is very troublesome to a Man of my Temper, who generally take the Chair that is next me, and walk first or last, in the Front or in the Rear, as Chance directs.  I have known my Friend Sir Roger’s Dinner almost cold before the Company could adjust the Ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and have heartily pitied my old Friend, when I have seen him forced to pick and cull his Guests, as they sat at the several Parts of his Table, that he might drink their Healths according to their respective Ranks and Qualities.  Honest Will.  Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with Ceremony, gives me abundance of Trouble in this Particular.  Though he has been fishing all the Morning, he will not help himself at Dinner ’till I am served.  When we are going out of the Hall, he runs behind me; and last Night, as we were walking in the Fields, stopped short at a Stile till I came up to it, and upon my making Signs to him to get over, told me, with a serious Smile, that sure I believed they had no Manners in the Country.