notwithstanding, a good account of them.
They had paid handsome dividends promptly
and honourably, receiving from the court
first-class certificates.

We never think of entering upon any new
business without a walk up to the great
old-fashioned concert-room, and a gossip with the
genius of the place. We could not conduct
our business in safety, enlarging as it
constantly is, without his aid. That respected
and useful person has become to us what he
is to half trading London, and a good part of
the provinces—a daily necessary of commercial
life.

GENTLEMEN IN HISTORY.

CICERO defines the Gentiles as those whose
ancestors had always been free, and who had
never forfeited their civil rights as citizens;
therefore the expression sine gente meant
those who were ignoble by parentage. Thus
the gentleman was originally a slave-master,
who prided himself upon a broad distinction
between his free blood and the base blood of
his dependents. But the gentleman in those
days had many attributes of true gentility.
He was an educated man; he had polished
and gentle manners at home, and was as
brave as a lion abroad on the field of battle.
Compared with the plebs whom he trod under
foot he was a scholar, and a man with noble
aspirations. First, then, the gentleman in his
very early days was not altogether unlike
Cincinnatus. In this period of his existence
he dropped the plough-handle to lead the
Roman legions. He led them to victory, then
put aside the sword, and went on with the
furrow in which he had left his plough. The
trumpets of Rome had no magic notes for
him: he was a simple-minded man who did
his duty, and was satisfied with the
congratulation of his own heart. The
gentleman did not, however, long continue to
resemble Cincinnatus. He moulded himself
to suit the times. For many years he was
understood to be a man sprung from a gentle
stock, whose necessities did not require
labour (except on the battle-field); who
would not brook an insult; who valued his
honour more than his life; and whose
manners were in accordance with those of his
contemporary leaders of fashion. He had a
stronger admiration for personal courage
than for the most splendid scholarship: he
loved a strong arm better than a subtle brain.
His lady-love preferred to see him a bleeding
knight at her feet, rather than a philosopher
conquering thought in his closet. And, even
now, how many gentle hearts think of him,
and wish that he were here, in this present
century, with the broken lance buried in his
side. He did not learn to read then, but he
sat a horse exquisitely.

Presently he began to give a careless
glance occasionally at the mysterious letters
and the curious crotchets which, hitherto, he
had left in contempt to the care of monks
and traders. About this time the gentleman
grew into something not remotely resembling
that Howard, Earl of Surrey, distinguished
by Camden as "the first nobleman that
illustrated his high birth with the beauty of
learning;" who contrived to spread abroad
the power of his lance, and to defy the world
to find a fairer woman than his Geraldine.
Amid all this noise and bombast—this love-
sickness and this lance-breaking, he managed
to write verses that smoothed with Italian
grace the rugged English of the old fathers.
Camden repeats of him: "He was acknowledged
to be the gallantest man, the politest
lover, and the completest gentleman of his
time." He and his co-gentles lived in a time
when the civilised states were struggling to
emerge from the barbarisms of the fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries—when the study of
law was coming into rivalry with the practice
of arms—when the rude pomp of ancient
chivalry was giving way before more
rational manners—and Petrarch's songs were
drowning the savage din of shields and lances.
At this time the gentleman began to show
faint signs of weakness, signs indeed that did
not in the least raise fears for his safety.
And, true enough, he recovered sufficiently to
display his ancient lineage; to dabble many
times in blood; to play false to many women;
to kick aside the alphabet and the grammar;
and to love liquor. But he had, taken
altogether, improved vastly. He began to keep
his hands clean from slaughter, and even to
pride himself on the appointments of his
apparel.

About this stage in his career the gentleman
often put aside his sword and lance, to
take up the courtier's wand of office—even to
throw down his cloak that his sovereign's feet
might not be soiled. All these were signs of
approaching dissolution. Men began to meddle
with him, and to ask impertinent questions
about his qualifications. All his long, long
life he had been accustomed to work out his
own will with his own sword; to assault any
dependent with whom he felt displeased;
and, in other ways, to prove his gentility: but
now, it seemed, men were arising to doubt
whether the little plebeian, in his coarse
swaddling clothes, was not the natural equal
of the little patrician muffled in lace?—
whether, by dint of hard study and natural
intelligence, little pleb might not be a better
gentleman than little patrician? These
questions were raised when the gentleman of the
old leaven was visibly declining, day by day;
when coarse oaths no longer fell from his lips;
when he could not consume his full quantity
of sack; when rust had gathered upon the
points of his lances; and when his dependents
forgot to place their necks under his
gentlemanly foot. In this melancholy time of
the gentleman's existence, men began to sum
into one dreadful catalogue the dreadful deeds
of which he had been guilty. They allowed