mouths, before the days of Waverley;[439] but neither does Scott’s dialogue bear criticism.  His lords brave each other in smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading; it is not warm with life.  In Shakespeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England, and in Christendom.  Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture.  A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face:  a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form:  it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.  A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.  I have seen an individual whose manners though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood;[440] yet with the port of an emperor,—­if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions.

20.  The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are the places where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the scepter at the door of the house.  Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall.  Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women.  A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman’s Rights.  Certainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself can show us how she shall be served.  The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva,[441] Juno,[442] or Polymnia;[443] and, by the firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calculators that another road exists than that which their feet know.  But besides those who make good in our imagination the place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls,[444] are there not women who fill our vase