distracted nations of Europe, and to bid the sword return into its sheath. When we recollect our many past deliverances, we may humbly hope that one greater than all may yet be in reserve; and if we truly and unfeignedly prize the religious and civil privileges which for so many years we have enjoyed, amidst storms and tempests, we cannot fail at the same time to recollect the terms on which they were granted, and the correspondent duties we owe to the "Giver of every good and perfect gift."

THE PROJECTOR. No 22.

"Conciliat animos hominum COMITAS, affabilitasque

sermonis."

CIC. de Off. II. 14.

September 1803. In the course of a short walk with a friend lately, I accompanied him into a shop, where he made several purchases of articles which I thought were somewhat dear; but I observed

that he laid down his money without hesitation; and, whatever attention he bestowed on the goods, he offered no kind of objection to the price, nor indulged himself in that species of luxurious wisdom which we call higgling.

You seem surprized, Mr. PROJECTOR," said he, on leaving the shop, "to see me so apparently negligent: you have, perhaps, hitherto considered me as a careful man in my bargains; and I believe I am so upon the whole; yet that shopkeeper contrives to rid me of all my chaffering propensities and precautions, and always gets from me whatever he is pleased to ask: with another I might probably be more circumspect, but this man disarms me. You are to know, I went into his shop, about a year since, to purchase a very trifling article, so trifling that I am ashamed to mention it, yet he served me with a civility, an humble respect, and a desire to please, which he could not have exceeded had I laid out an hundred pounds. By this he fairly caught me. I now think it a crime to go any where else for the same description of goods-they are, perhaps, not better than I might find in shops more convenient for me;. but his civil manners are irresistible. We are now somewhat more intimate; yet you perceive his familiarity goes no farther than to accept

whatever kind of weather I am pleased to bring, and to take in good part my opinion of the invasion. I have recommended him to many more valuable customers, who are not only content, but have thanked me. And all this, Mr. PROJECTOR, comes of CIVILITY."

every

Having experienced something like this in my own small and confined intercourse with the gentlemen behind the counter, I could not refuse my assent to what my friend advanced, and made allowance for his unsuspecting manner of dealing, in consideration of the pleasure which it afforded him—and I promised at the same time, in consequence of a hint from him, to take this matter into more serious discussion, for the purpose of proving that, if honesty be the best policy, CIVILITY is the next best.

As that CIVILITY which I have, therefore, adopted for the subject of this PROJECTOR, must be well understood by all my readers (for

all my

readers must have once at least in their lives* been in a shop), I shall not attempt any definition of it. A worthy predecessor of mine seems to rank Civility with Good-breeding; but

* A Lady, who is sometimes permitted to look at my MS. requested I would change this to "once a day."

I am humbly of opinion, that civility is rather a branch or a species of good-breeding, and that politeness is a superior qualification to both; or, what may be thought to amount to the same thing, a qualification for superior places. A man may be polite in a court, or an assembly; but to say he had been civil in such places would have implied that he had served the company with liquors, or had called their servants and carriages, or performed any other menial work with a porter-like attention.

Instead, therefore, of encumbering the subject by farther distinctions, I flatter myself I may be permitted to say, without risk of contradiction, that, in a commercial country like ours, in “a nation of shopkeepers" (as our polite neighbours the French are pleased to call us), CIVILITY possesses charms superior either to good-breeding or to politeness, because it is an article of greater necessity and of wider extent. It is in demand in all seasons, at all hours, and on every occasion, and therefore must be kept in readiness to be produced at the shortest possible warning. It partakes of the genius of an extempore; and civil men are a species of Improvisatori. They are expected to return a civil answer to a question of any kind whatever; whereas your well-bred and

polite people claim a time to reflect, and plead the privilege of passion, with all the lesser prerogatives of huffing, pouting, looking grave, and taking miff. They are, therefore, not obliged to return an answer unless they like the question, or unless it come within certain prescribed rules of etiquette. Hence I account the civil man the greater hero; he stands firm whatever rudeness he may meet with. He "smiles in the whirlwind" of impertinence, and

enjoys the storm" of fashionable shopping. But the polite man, on the contrary, without any impeachment of his courage, may turn on his heel, and take a whole night to consider whether there are not " throats to be cut."

That CIVILITY possesses an irresistible charm, may be proved by be proved by an appeal to general feeling and experience; and, when we reflect that it is chiefly employed in the transfer of money, we must allow it a very singular degree of merit. But, when we view it in this light, we are at the same time surprized at the infatuation of those who despise it, and who are yet dépendent on public favour for their success in trade, and dependent on strangers and casual visitors, whom they cannot by any other means conciliate or secure. When we see a shopkeeper (a class of men peculiarly