The only way to form manners is to teach them from the
beginning as a part of religion, as indeed they are. Devotion to Our
Lady will give to the manners both of boys and girls something which
stamps them as Christian and Catholic, something above the world's
level. And, as has been so often pointed out, the Church's ritual is the
court ceremonial of the most perfect manners, in which every least
detail has its significance, and applies some principle of inward faith
and devotion to outward service.
If we could get to the root of all that the older codes of manners
required, and even the conventionalities of modern life--these remnants,
in so far as they are based on the older codes--it would be found that,
as in the Church's ceremonial, not one of them was without its meaning,
but that all represented some principle of Christian conduct, even if
they have developed into expressions which seem trivial. Human things
tend to exaggeration and to "sport," as gardeners say, from their type
into strange varieties, and so the manners which were the outcome of
chivalry--exquisite, idealized, and restrained in their best period, grew
artificial in later times and elaborated themselves into an etiquette
which grew tyrannical and even ridiculous, and added violence to the
inevitable reaction which followed.
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