can be brought against a man of education. You would understand me at once as being desirous of conveying a grave idea, were I to say that Socrates, though condemned by vulgar and ferocious envy, died passionless, a philosopher and a gentleman; or, that Charles the First, of England, after having long dispensed with veracity, and often stooped to unworthy practices, demeaned himself, during his trial and on the scaffold, like a gentleman.

We naturally ask, then, what is the meaning of this comprehensive term, and is there anything substantial in the character which it designates, or is it an idol, arbitrarily set up by fickle Fashion beside morality, perhaps above religion? Has it become a caricature, however innocent at first, or ought it to be well known and attentively cultivated?

I must not detain you with the well-known etymologies of the word, given among others by Gibbon, nor with its meaning in the English law. Blackstone's Commentaries, or any proper book of reference, will speedily satisfy the curious on this point. Let us rather endeavour to ascertain what is meant at present by those who choose their words with care and knowledge, when they use the term gentleman in its highest acceptation. I believe it signifies that character which is distinguished by strict honour, self possession, forbearance, generous as well as refined feelings, and polished deportment—a character to which all meanness, explosive irritableness and peevish fretfulness are alien; to which, consequently, a generous candour, scrupulous veracity, courage, both moral and physical, dignity, self-respect, a studious avoidance of giving offence to others or oppressing them, and liberality in thought,

argument, and conduct, are habitual and have become natural. Perhaps we are justified in saying that the character of the gentleman implies an addition of refinement of feeling, and loftiness of conduct to the rigid dictates of morality and purifying precepts of religion. It seems to me that we always connect the ideas of honour, polish, collectedness of mind and liberal disposition, with the word gentleman, and feel that its antagonistic characters are if you permit me, in the spirit of philosophical inquiry, to use words, some of which do not often find a befitting place in a gentlemanly discourse-the clown, the gossip, the backbiter, the dullard, coward, braggart, fretter, swaggerer, bully, ruffian, and the blackguard, according to that peculiar attribute of the gentleman, the opposite to which we may be desirous of pointing out in the antago nistic character."

The true gentleman is obviously only another name for the true Christian, and indeed the divine law is the only infallible guide which will be found applicable to every diffi cult and doubtful case with which we are called upon to deal in the multifarious transactions of life. The world's code of honour is a mere conventional and most imperfect version of the Divine code of honour, and the mutual understandings by which the whole transactions of the mart and the change are carried on are only of value in so far as they are consistent with its more ample requisitions. Yet while we characterize their requisitions as ample, they are at the same time the easiest of all to understand, and leave the man whose life is guided by their rule, in no perplexity to determine between right and wrong. "In all spheres of our lives," says Professor Lieber, "there occur

many acts of so complex a nature, that, if they are submitted to a long process of reasoning, which possibly may appear the more impartial, the more heartlessly it is undertaken, they will allow of a perplexing number of arguments, for and against, of bewildering precedents on either side, and of distinctions more embarrassing than unravelling, so that in the end we see our way less clearly than at the beginning-acts, from which, nevertheless, a mind instinct with genuine gentlemanliness will shrink at once, as being of doubtful candour, dangerous to honour. of suspicious honesty, or inclining to what is illiberal or undignified. No merchant or artizan, no advocate or statesman, teacher or minister-no citizen, in whatever circle he may move-none of you in your preparatory spheres, can avoid being called upon promptly to decide in cases of this nature. Acts, somewhat tinctured with what we would call unhandsome, or slightly tainted with what may be mean, cannot always be distinctly discerned as such by the reasoning faculties, and all these acts are nevertheless dangerous, because they are infusions of impurity into our soul, where nothing is at rest, but everything, good or evil, is in constant perfusing and assimilating activity-a psychological law which is subject to far fewer exceptions, if any, than the corresponding law of assimilation of matter in the animal body.

History is full of these instances; daily life surrounds us with them, and although the pure principles as well as precepts of religion are invaluable, and of primordial importance to all ethic vitality, and for which indeed you can find no substitute, search where you may, yet a keen and instinctive sense and glowing love of honour, watchful

and prompt self-respect, and habitual recoiling from what is low, vulgar, coarse and base in thought, feeling, deed, or manner, form an active moral co-efficient, or, if I may say so, an additional faculty quickly to receive impressions, upon which religious consciousness decides and works."

In no path of life is this high principle of Christian honour more requisite than in that of the trader or the nerchant. Where our own interests are involved, conscience will sometimes be silenced by self-interest and covetousness, and then it is that the man of true gentleness shows the source of his integrity and the comprehensive force which he recognises in the Golden Rule, "Do to another as you would have another do to you."

Our vigorous English poet, Tennyson, thus strikingly characterizes the difference between the man of rank or mere social position, and the true gentleman, in his beautiful poem entitled "In Memoriam," and dedicated to the memory of a lost friend whom he regarded as one of the noblest specimens of what a good man ought to be :

The churl in spirit, up or down

Along the scale of ranks, through all,

To who may grasp a golden ball,

By blood a king, at heart a clown;

The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil

His want in forms for fashion's sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons through the gilded pale:

For who can always act? But he,

To whom a thousand memories call,
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seemed to be,

So wore his outward best, and join'd
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;

Nor ever narrowness or spite,

Or villain fancy fleeting by,

Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light.

And thus he bore without abuse

The grand old name of gentleman,

Defamed by every charlatan,

And soiled with all ignoble use!

CHAPTER XIII.

LIBERALITY AND BENEVOLENCE.

The wealth that circulates like social blood
From rich to poor, from palace to the hut,
Is like the life-blood genial in its flow;
But that which stagnates in the hoarded vault,

Or bank, or merchant's safe, is the disease

That, lurking in the veins, transforms the blood,
Till it forsakes the cold extremities,

And throttles with plethoric greed of all
The miser heart.

W. N.

NOTHING dignifies the pursuit of wealth so much as the consideration, that by its acquisition a man gains the power of doing good. How thoroughly w s this exemplified in the career of the noble British trader, Sir Thomas Fowell

T