Gentlemen-at-heart, Gentlemen-in-manners,
Gentlemen-born, Perfect-gentlemen—which
is the union of the three. All these genera
of the order gentleman are distinguished by
certain characters which are as peculiar to
this order of men as any other characters
may be peculiar to the cruciferae among
plants, or to the marsupials among animals.
Every gentleman is known by white gloves
upon his hands, concealing very carefully
pared fingernails. So thought the German
philosopher, and so thinks Monsieur Méry.
The English gentleman wears white gloves
constantly, and uses two or three pairs every
day. When he goes to a ball he takes—so to
speak—a pocketful of gloves, because he must
discard each pair as soon as it has suffered
the least crack or soil. Having explained
this point of manners, I resume the story.
The infraction of coach-discipline implied in
the occupation of the box-seat by a person who
wore coloured gloves, and was therefore not a
gentleman, had not been noticed, because this
young man had a distinguished air, and wore
a grey waterproof qui-capit-ille-facit, bought
of Phythian. He owed his place to a close
friendship with the coachman, but at the door
of the lonely cottage before mentioned, being
left in charge of reins and whip, he held them
so carelessly that the horses became restive,
attention was called to the young man, his
gloves were observed, and an outcry arose
from the whole outside upon the subject of his
usurpation. Patrick the coachman had gone for
a glass of sherry, and being called on by the
uproar was forced to depose Sir John Lively.
"So much the better," said Sir John Lifely,
"I will get down and drink a glass of soda-water."
He entered the cottage and called for some soda.

It was brought to him by a young lady of
ravishing beauty, in a handsome poplin dress.
After he had drunk the soda he continued
gazing at her, until Patrick warned him to
take his seat behind the veritable gentleman
who had replaced him on the coach-box. This
gentleman was Mr. Copperas, engineer of
the Manchester Railway. He went no farther
than Oxford, where the coach stopped, where
passengers dined at the Swawnn Inn. The host
carved mountains of roast beef, and caused
the Barclay-Perkins to foam in all glasses.
After dinner John Lively went out to
purchase a pair of white gloves, and dream of
the lovely creature he had seen at Bucks.
Properly gloved, and adjusting carefully on
his head his fine beaver qui-capit-ille-facit, he
resumed the coach-box and went on to
Birmingham.

John Lively was an Irishman who possessed
nothing but a little heritage, a cabin near
Strafford, on the road to Manchester. He
had left work in a factory at Manchester to
seek London employment. He had been in
London two days, during which he had been
too much shocked at the apostasy of St.
Paul, as represented by his Protestant
cathedral, and by the corruption of the female
sex (which Monsieur Mory omits no opportunity
of pointing out, together with Protestantism,
as the most horrible and universal of all
horrors to be found in London). John, therefore,
was travelling home, because he preferred
a glass of whiskey and a patate out of his own
garden to a cover laid for him at the Duke of
Northumberland's palace, Charing Cross.

Patrick the coachman was John Lively's
countryman and bosom friend, and since
Lively had fallen in love with the fair but
mysterious lady of Bucks, Patrick promised
to obtain during his next journey to London
and bring back some tidings about her. "Ah, Mr.
Lively," Patrick said, ''it is not soda you
have been drinking: it is English poison."

Patrick came back full of tidings about Mr.
Copperas, who was troubled by marshes on a
proposed line of rail, that would, if
completed, interfere with the coach business
between Birmingham and London. Of the
lady he had learnt nothing: nobody knew
her. He had asked her for a glass of Port
wine, which she gave him gratuitously, and
he had seen in her cottage three members of
the titotal abstinence society, who were
travelling on foot to make converts between
Liverpool and Middlesex, and who drank on
the lady's premises twenty pints of wite-bread
porter, two bottles of whiskey and three of
claret, for all of which, when they got up,
the fair damsel refused money: hoping,
Patrick supposed, to get the custom of the
whole titotal abstinence society. The coachman
knew nothing more except that she had
on, when he saw her, a faded-leaf silk-dress,
and wore roses in her hair.

John Lively having heard all this under
cover of the night, in New Street, Birmingham,
resumed next day his anchorite life fn
his cabin, near the village and castle of
Stafford, in the lovely plains of Lancashire, where
he was parted by the misty mountains of
Oxfordshire from the fair maid of Bucks.
Having no money left, he determined to go to
Manchester, make bricks at Salford, earn a
few sovereigns, and hurry back to Bucks
before any lord's son who collected ladies had
bought up that lady of his heart. When he
had arrived at this determination, he was
waited upon by a visitor, who wished to
ascertain what land he possessed, and desired
leave to work for him upon a bit of hill, that
was part of his patrimony and produced
nothing but stones. This visitor was Mr.
Copperas, who only wanted, as he said, a
small bit of dry ground among the surrounding
marshes, upon which to lay some rails in
safety. He would cut his one hill into two,
leave him the two, and give him fifty pounds
for the use of the small valley so made in the
middle. "Fifty pounds," said John Lively,
"is too little." "Do you know, sir, that this
railway will cost us a hundred and fifty
thousand pounds?" "Make it a hundred pounds,"
said the Irishman. "I consent."