ETIQUETTE

(Fr. a ticket.) Is the ceremonial code if poHle life, more voluminous and minute in each portion if society according to its rank. The word is derived from the custom nf arranging places at proce ions. . by tickets delivered beforehand to applicants. The Byzantine court appears to have carried the practice of ceremonial observances to the most inconvenient and ludicrous extent. Hut of modern courtly etiquette, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, is regarded by some as the founder (see Con venations Lexicon). His desire to conceal his inferiority in rank (ml a great feudatory only) to the great sovereigns of Europe, whom he equalled in power, induced him to surround Ins presence with a multitude of officers and numberle formalities. At no time, probably, was the spirit of etiquette so predominant and so tyrannical as in u rt of Louis XIV.; and the Memoir* of St. Simon are full of the most extraordinary proofs of the subjugation of the mind i ol men of sense, wit, and even independent Character in other respects, to its engro ing influence, — then pride in attaining any little point of precedence, and their mortification in failing of it. The smaller courts of Germany caricatured ihe ceremonial of that of the Great Monarch, and carried its strictne to an absurd extent. At the present day the ancient etiquette of courts is continually losing something of its strictne . [s. 439]