For the power of manners an aristocratic
class, whether materialized or not, will always, from its circumstances,
have a strong sense. And although for this power of social life and
manners, so important to civilization, our English race has no special
natural turn, in our aristocracy this power emerges and marks them. When
the day of general humanization comes, they will have fixed the standard
of manners. The English simplicity, too, makes the best of the English
aristocracy more frank and natural than the best of the like class
anywhere else, and even the worst of them it makes free from the
incredible fatuities and absurdities of the worst. Then the sense of
conduct they share with their countrymen at large. In no class has it
such trials to undergo; in none is it more often and more grievously
overborne. But really the right comment on this is the comment of
Pepys[484] upon the evil courses of Charles the Second and the Duke of
York and the court of that day: "At all which I am sorry; but it is the
effect of idleness, and having nothing else to employ their great
spirits upon.
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