"Gentility being neither ugly nor sublime, belonged wholly to the beautiful. Gentility, whether in dress, personal manners, or architecture, was harmony, smoothness, polish, gradual rather than abrupt variation, the subduing of harsh emotions. Gentility beatified the world in Burke's sense. Eighteenth-century portraits, with their graceful and easy postures, fine clothes, and composed faces, present people who have overcome their baser impulses and learned to conceal the fearful secrets of their hearts....
"...Gentility's devotion to beautiful nature put it at odds with the ugly and the sublime. Horror and awe, emotions evoked by the sublime, were repressed in genteel natures, as were all things base and disturbing -- the dissonant, the plebeian, the filthy."
-- The Refinement of America, Persons, Houses, Cities, Richard L. Bushman, 1992, p. 98.
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