ill-founded. May we not then assume that it is equally ill-founded in the present?

But, it may be said, it is no good to try to get rid of the problem in this off-hand manner. The fact remains that mankind has always believed its manners to be decaying, and this fact has in some way or other got to be accounted for. Unless there was some reason for it, men in every age and in every place would not have thought the same thought and made the same complaint. When people have been saying the same thing from China to Peru, from India to the Nile, from Norway to Naples, ever since the dawn of history, there must be something in it. The notion of a universal and immemorial, and yet wholly fortuitous and gratuitous, piece of blague is absurd. Where, then, is the necessary substantial resting-place for the belief that our manners are disappearing?

We believe that it is to be found in the fact that manners change like the fashions-are, in fact, as much the sport of fashion as bonnets, skirts, mantles, or collars.

But it is notorious that oldish people cannot keep up with the fashions. One of the first signs of that mental induration which comes to almost all men and women some time after forty is that they become unable to see that the new style of collar or way of doing the hair is an improvement. There is no more certain sign that a person is ageing than his or her declarations that the new fashions are hideous and disgusting. But mark, the fact that the declarations that our manners are disappearing never come from the young, but always from persons past forty. The truth is, their minds have become indurated. They have become incapable of

following the fashions in manners. But the fashions in manners are not influenced by these expressions of blind indignation. Driven on by that necessity for evolution and change which we cannot ignore, though we cannot explain, our manners-i.e. our codes of social behaviour are in a perpetual state of flux. There is no sudden revolution, of course, but in ten years' time there has been sufficient alteration to make the way we flirt now, or the way we talk to ladies in the drawingroom after dinner, seem strange and outrageously indecorous or absurd to the man who has stood still and not moved with the times.

After all, manners are only conventions-rules as to the pitch of the voice, the turn of the head, the form of words to be used. But it is the nature of conventions to seem good only to those who know them and can appreciate their exact value. An unsympathetic convention is necessarily a monstrosity. If the recognised convention of the generation is for a man who wishes to be polite to a girl at a ball to say 'You might give us a dance,' then there is no real decay of manners in the use of the phrase. It sounds, indeed, to the generation who have developed it and use it the only really polite thing to say, and far better manners, ‘in the true sense,' than the ridiculously formal and dancing-mastery 'May I have the honour of a dance?' Those who use it are, in fact, not the least conscious of any decay of manners. Men accustomed to the 'May I have the honour?' formula are, however, utterly shocked by the 'You might give us a dance' convention, and the moment when they begin to realise its development they declare that the old courtesy, &c., has died out. It is the same

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with a hundred other little matters of form. A new fashion in giving an arm or holding open, or even not holding open, a door seems boorish to the older generation, who knew the proper way of doing the thing in 1860, and since then have used no other.'

Probably the last resort of those who believe firmly in the decay of manners will be to ask how it is, granted that it is merely a change of manners and not a decay that we are witnessing, that the change is always for the worse -always in the direction of roughness, rudeness, and lack of formality. We recognise the need for an answer to this question. No doubt manners just now appear to be growing rougher and ruder. It is, however, merely a conventional, and not a real, roughness and rudeness, and the reason for it is plain. The manners of the upper classes in England are putting on a veneer of roughness, are adopting the use of 'rustication,' to employ the architectural phrase, for the same reason that society is always changing, or tending to change, its place of meeting in the Park. That reason is the desire to get away, to keep separate from the herd. The smart people gave up being formally polite and making bows and 'graceful inclinations of assent' when the middle class grew polite and shopboys and shopgirls adopted the etiquette of the old régime. When the manners of those below them in the social scale became thoroughly polite the only way of escape was the adoption of a self-conscious roughness. It became the right thing to say, ' May I have a dance?' in Mayfair because at middle-class balls a beautiful bow and a formal demand had become the fashion.

Society is only apparently unmannerly because it is

trying to dodge its humbler followers and arrange a set of conventions which will not be pirated. As soon, however, as its retreat is discovered it will have to find a new device. Then, in all probability, we shall see a reaction in favour of formality, and our young men and maidens will bow and simper and pass formal compliments after the manner of the eighteenth century. But, after all, these things are only externals, and really matter very little. The main fact is that our manners in essentials are growing less, not more, rough. If we take the wider view of the social situation we shall see that men are less, not more, disagreeable than they used to be. Let anyone who doubts this compare the way men treat each other when alone to the way in which they acted sixty years ago. The old ideas of what was fair in the way of 'roasting' a fool or a bore or a nervous man have completely changed, and few people now can be found to defend the old-fashioned style of practical joke.

Theodore Hook was not counted a specially rude or discourteous man by his contemporaries. If he tried to practise his form of wit now he would not be tolerated for an hour in the society of well-bred people, and we doubt if even in the stables his ways would be counted possible. Instead of our manners decaying, they are steadily improving. Of course, we English shall never be picturesquely polite; we are too awkward and selfconscious for that; but in every other respect our evolution of manners is entirely towards good breeding and courtesy.

BOWER-BIRD HUSBANDS

Is your husband a bower-bird?' That was a question addressed to a young wife by a social statist anxious to get his friends well classified under their proper generic appellations. As a matter of fact all husbands, if they only knew it, are either bower-birds or not bower-birds; but we admit that the phrase is at first sight a little startling, and requires elucidation. It will be remembered that the male bower-bird is endowed by nature with the desire to decorate its home with every conceivable form of ornament. It is a natural æsthete, and strives to do for its nest what Messrs. Maple or Shoolbred do for the villa residence in Wimbledon or Hampstead. Nothing comes amiss to it. With a few feathers, a shell or two, and some fragments of broken looking-glass or sparkling mica it will rig up a highly ornate bower for the alleged delight of its mate. It is as if the birds were possessed by the genius of those good women who write in the ladies' papers under the heading of 'The Home Beautiful' or 'Fair Settings for Fair Faces,' and give tips' to correspondents on the art of turning a seaside lodging into a dream of loveliness' by the proper disposition of 'a dozen Liberty handkerchiefs, some Japanese paper fans, and a few photographs of your lady friends in evening or Court dress; if the