The Bazar Book of Decorum. The Care of the Person, Manners, Etiquette, and Ceremonials

New York: Harper and Brothers.

UNDER many things that otherwise could hardly be borne, the mind is upheld by the hope that in a better state, even on earth, such troubles will be unknown; and we cling to the belief that in a happier and humaner civilization that odious device of society, the polished gentleman, and that invention of the enemy, the accomplished lady, will not exist, and that naturally there will be no books to teach the imitation of their abominable perfection. Men and women born into rich and fashionable society will always be an fait in its customs ; and people whose wish to rise into that kind of society is cruelly granted will not be kept from betraying their unfashionable origin by all the behavior-books that ever were written. In fact, most behavior-books seem to hint at a pathetic self-consciousness in their authors; they read like the painful warnings of experience, and they are commonly of such a vulgar tone, that it seems better not to seek the difficult circles for which they fit their reader. All the wisdom needed for the career of the ordinary republican aspirant can be condensed into three rules, which he'may write down on his reversible paper cuff: I. Keep out of fine society ; 2. Be cleanly, simple, and honest; 3. Never be ashamed of a blunder. Everything beyond these is vanity.

But we suppose that the ordinary republican aspirant will not put up with this succinctness yet a while ; and meantime here is happily “The Bazar Book of Decorum,” composed in the most elegant language that could be got in the dictionary, and overflowing with fashionable knowledge. The style is really a marvel of genius and learning, and places the ordinary objects in thought and nature in a light so novel and surprising that you feel the freshest interest in them. Would you ever suppose, for example, that you had such a thing as this on your face ? “ The nose, as is well known, ” —observe the kind intimacy with which this great author stoops to the common mind, — “ is the organ of smell; for this purpose it is endowed ” — now he rises again — “ with a pair of nerves, called the olfactory, whose abounding filaments pierce the many holes and cover the multiple surfaces of the light and porous structure termed the spongy bone, which lies at the root of each nostril.” We call this a fine diction, and a beautiful use of a familiar object for the illustration of literary power; but what do you say to a warning against trying to darken the eyes by dropping ink into them, when, couched in terms like these? “Not only does a decorous taste emphatically condemn these practices, which give unmistakable evidences of the painted Jezebel, but prudence forbids them.” Yet this is not more magnificent than our author’s definition of laughter. “Laughter,” he says, without looking on the book, and as it were with one hand tied behind him, — “ laughter, which is the ordinary physical manifestation of the sentiment of mirth, is peculiarly favorable to health. Its action, starting with the lungs, diaphragm, and contiguous muscles, is conveyed to the whole body, ' shaking the sides,’ and producing that general jellylike vibration, of which we are so agreeably conscious when under its influence.” And concerning the saddest thing in the world he is as nobly ready and voluble as concerning the gayest: “ The human body even in the unconsciousness of death continues to be the object of a punctilious observance of ceremony. The mourning relatives are usually spared many of the painful details of funereal civility by the convenient officiousness of the undertaker, upon whom devolve the chief arrangements of the burial and its attendant formalities.” This fitly introduces the subject of funerals, and is so pertinent and just that (if our author will allow us humbly to form ourselves upon his delightful manners) we are sensible of our inability to withhold from it the meed of a grateful encomium. We must likewise praise him when he calls the female effort to make a small waist, “ reducing the centre of the body to an almost impalpable tenuity,” as he does in preparing us for a fact that makes us know him at once for a person of the highest breeding : “ As we stood admiring that most perfect conception of female grace, the Venus of Milo in the Louvre, we took from the fair woman hanging upon our arm her pocket-handkerchief, and made a comparative measurement of the ancient and modern beauties,”— and did not get his ears boxed, the lucky dog !

Of course, a man who can write like this does not embarrass himself much with the prescription of forms and particular rules for behavior. He would guard his reader against the habit of passing his pocket-comb through his hair at table, but we believe he nowhere especially tells him not to pick his teeth with his fork. The author is not only a very learned man, as you may judge from his language, but a person of general polite reading, and he chooses to treat mostly of the loftier aspects of his theme, as when, instead of telling us some such thing as that a gentleman always uses his handkerchief in blowing his nose, he touches upon a topic like the control of the emotions and mcllifluously polysyllables forth : “A well-bred person is ordinarily disinclined to make a public demonstration of his most affectionate feelings and tenderest sentiments,” He is also replete — of course he would say replete — with appropriate anecdotes of the fashionable and literary world, and he commonly ends his delicious discourses with one of these, teaching, for instance, that you must not be bashful, though Hawthorne, “with a head like that of Jove, and a natural majesty that might have become the throne of Olympus, would shrink, blush, hang his head, and hesitate in speech before a stranger like an awkward school-boy.” He is familiar with Tennyson, as we know by his quoting him in this wise : —

We find our author in every way admirable in fact, lofty in thought, proper in sentiment, of a very subtle and characteristic humor, and a severe morality. He is a companion for the toilet and the centre-table, for the study and the drawing-room, in whom we think the reader will find an unfailing pleasure (and profit, of course) ; and we have quite made up our mind when, in sitting for our mental photograph, we come to that bewildering question, “ What book, not the Bible, would you part with last?” to say, “The Bazar Book of Decorum.”