allowed from infancy that large degree of freedom which is deemed expedient for enlightened nurseries, and who regulate their own conduct on the vast majority of occasions. They are as a rule light-hearted, truthful, affectionate, and occasionally amusing; but it cannot be denied that they lack that nicety of breeding which was at one time the distinguishing mark of children of the upper classes, and which was in a great measure born of the restraints that surrounded them. The faculty of sitting still without fidgeting, of walking without rushing, and of speaking without screaming can be acquired only under tuition; but it is worth some little trouble to attain. When Sydney Smith remarked that the children of rank were generally so much better bred than the children of the middle classes, he recognized the greater need for self-restraint that entered into their lives. They may have been less natural, perhaps, but they were infinitely more pleasing to his fastidious eyes; and the unconscious grace which he admired was merely the reflection of the universal courtesy that surrounded them. Nor is this all. "The necessity of self-repression," says a recent
