and requires no law but his word to make him fulfil an engagement, such a man is a gentleman." And, in the Quarterly Review, where the writer is enlarging upon the best education, he thus emphatically says,-" Let a man's pride be to be a gentleman; furnish him with elegant and refined pleasures, imbue him with the love of intellectual pursuits, and you have a better security for his turning out a good citizen, and a good Christian, than if you have confined him by the strictest moral and religious discipline, kept him in innocent and unsuspecting ignorance of all the vices of youth, and in the mechanical and orderly routine of the severest system of education." 66 Seriously speaking, we must hold it a remarkable thing that every Englishman should be a "gentleman;" that in so democratic a country our common title of honour-which all men assert for themselves-should be one which professedly depends on station, on accidents, rather than on qualities! or at best, as Coleridge interprets it, on a certain indifference to money matters;" which certain indifference again must be wise or mad, you would think, exactly as one possesses much money or possesses little! We suppose it must be the commercial genius of the nation, counteracting and suppressing its political genius; for the Americans are said to be still more notable in this respect than we. Now, what a hollow, windy vacuity of internal character this indicates; how, in place of a rightly-ordered heart, we strive only to exhibit a full purse; and all pushing, rushing, elbowing on towards a false aim, the courtier's kibes are more and more galled by the toe of the peasant; and on every side, instead of faith, hope, and charity, we have neediness, greediness, and vain glory; all this is palpable enough. Fools that we are! Why should we wear our knees to horn, and sorrowfully beat our breasts, praying day and night to Mammon, who, if he would even hear us, has almost nothing to give? For, granting that the deaf brute-god were to relent for our sacrificings to change our gilt brass into solid gold, and, instead of hungry actors of rich gentility, make us all in very deed Rothschild-Howards to morrow, what good were it? Are we not already denizens of this wondrous England, with its high Shakspeares and Hampdens; nay, of this wondrous universe, with its galaxies and eternities, and unspeakable splendours, that we should so worry, and scramble, and tear one another in pieces for some acres (nay, still oftener, for the show of some acres), more or less, of clay property? the largest of which properties-the Sutherland itself is invisible even from the moon.-Carlyle. INDEX. Accession of Queen Victoria, 77. Adrian, the Model Roman Emperor, 15. Arthur, King, his Remains at Glaston- Bacon, Francis, History of, 58. Bonaparte: Was he ever in London? 45. Broughton, Lord, Recollections of, 78. Characteristics: What are they? 1. Churches Dedicated to Charles I., 61. Gentleman, Characteristics of, 84. Gentleman, On, by Johnson and Baily, 86. Gentleman, Steele on, 87. George I., Character of, 72. George IV., Sketched by Thackeray, 75. Hamilton, Sir William, his Learning, 20. 53. Heinrich Heine, Death of, 18. Hercules, his Labours and Legends, 4. Herodotus, Travels of, 9. Hogarth's Print of Lord Lovat, 67. Hume, Joseph, Memoir of, 81. James I., Death of, 60. Leonardo da Vinci, Tomb of, 17. Maginn, Dr., Epitaph on, 27. Mary Queen of Scots, her Prison- Moore, Thomas, Conversation of, 24. Scinde," 83. Shaftesbury's Characteristics, 1. Tradition and History, 64. Victoria, Queen, Accession of, 77. Voltaire, Fontenelle, and Diderot, 33. Washington, Character of, 42. 80. What Makes a Gentleman? 84. GRIFFIN'S SHILLING MANUALS, Edited by JOHN TIMBS. Uniform with the present work, price One Shilling. I. ONE THOUSAND DOMESTIC HINTS. II. POPULAR SCIENCE. III. ODDITIES OF HISTORY. IV. THOUGHTS FOR TIMES AND SEASONS. V. CURIOSITIES OF ANIMAL AND VEGETAble Life, Bell & Bain, Printers, Glasgow. 141 |