A friend of yours and mine has justly defined good breeding to be "the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them." Taking this for granted (as I think it cannot be disputed), it is astonishing to me that anybody who had good sense and good nature (and I believe you have both) can essentially fail in good breeding. As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons, places, and circumstances, and are only to be acquired by observation and experience; but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the same. Good manners are to particular societies what good morals are to society in general--their cement and their security. And as laws are enacted to enforce good morals, or at least to prevent the ill effects of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones. And indeed there seems to me to be less difference, both between the crimes and punishments, than at first one would imagine.... Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied compact between civilized people as protection and obedience are between kings and subjects: whoever in either case violates that compact, justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own part, I really think that next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing: and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of "well-bred."
It is very certain that no man is fit for everything; but it is almost as certain too that there is scarce any one man who is not fit for something, which something nature plainly points out to him by giving him a tendency and propensity to it. I look upon common-sense to be to the mind what conscience is to the heart,--the faithful and constant monitor of what is right or wrong. And I am convinced that no man commits either a crime or a folly but against the manifest and sensible representations of the one or the other. Every man finds in himself, either from nature or education,--for they are hard to distinguish,--a peculiar bent and disposition to some particular character; and his struggling against it is the fruitless and endless labor of Sisyphus. Let him follow and cultivate that vocation, he will succeed in it, and be considerable in one way at least; whereas if he departs from it he will at best be inconsiderable, probably ridiculous.