dered his person, whenever the weather would permit, from the neighbourhood of Camberwell into the favourite promenades of the city, with a mincing gait that would have become a gentleman-usher of the black-rod. What a strange infatuation to live in a dream of being taken for what one is not,-in deceiving others, and at the same time ourselves; for, no doubt, these persons believed that they thus appeared to the world in their true characters, and that their assumed pretensions did no more than justice to their real merits!

Dress makes the man, and want of it the

fellow :

The rest is all but leather and prunella.

I confess, however, that I admire this look of a gentleman, more when it rises from the level of common life, and bears the stamp of intellect, than when it is formed out of the mould of adventitious circumstances. I think more highly of Wycherley than I do of Lord Hinchinbroke, for looking like a lord. In the one, it was the effect of native genius, grace, and spirit; in the other, comparatively speaking, of pride or custom. A visitor complimenting Voltaire on the growth and flourishing condition of some trees in his grounds "Aye," said the French wit, "they have nothing else to do!" A lord has nothing to do but to look like a lord: our comic poet had something else to do, and did it!*

Though the disadvantages of nature or accident do not act as obstacles to the look of a gentleman, those of education and employment do. A shoe-maker, who is bent in two over his daily task; taylor, who sits cross-legged all day; a ploughman, who wears clog-shoes over the furrowed miry soil, and can hardly drag his feet after him; a scholar, who has pored all his life over books, are not likely to possess that natural freedom and ease, or to pay that strict attention to personal appearances, that the look of a gentleman implies. I might add, that a manmilliner behind a counter, who is compelled to show every mark of complaisance to his customers, but hardly expects common civility from them in return; or a sheriff's officer,

who has a consciousness of power, but none of good-will to or from any body,-are equally remote from the beau ideal of this character. A man who is awkward from bashfulness is a clown,-as one who is showing off a number of impertinent airs and graces at every turn is a coxcomb, or an upstart. Mere awkwardness, or rusticity of behaviour, may arise, either from want of presence of mind in the company of our betters, (the commonest hind goes about his regular business without any of the mauvaise honte,)-from a deficiency of breeding (as it is called) in not having been taught certain fashionable accomplishments-or from unremitting application to certain sorts of mechanical labour, unfitting the body for general or indifferent uses. (That vulgarity which proceeds from a total disregard of decorum, and want of careful controul over the different actions of the body-such as loud speaking, boisterous gesticulations, &c.-is rather rudeness and violence than awkwardness, or uneasy restraint.) Now the gentleman is free from all these causes of ungraceful demeanour. He is independent in his circumstances, and is used to enter into society on equal terms; he is taught the modes of address, and forms of courtesy, most commonly practised, and most proper to ingra tiate him into the good opinion of those he associates with; and he is relieved from the necessity of following any of those laborious trades, or callings, which cramp, strain, and distort the human frame. He is not bound to do any one earthly thing; to use any exertion, or put himself in any posture, that is not perfectly easy and graceful, agreeable and becoming. Neither is he at present re◄ quired to excel in any art or science, game or exercise. He is supposed qualified to dance a minuet, not to dance on the tight rope-to stand upright, not to stand on his head. He has only to sacrifice to the Graces. Alcibiades threw away a flute, because the playing on it discomposed his features. Take the fine gentleman out of the common boardingschool or drawing-room accomplishnents, and set him to any ruder or more difficult task, and he will make

but a sorry figure. Ferdinand in the Tempest, when he is put by Prospero to carry logs of wood, does not strike us as a very heroical character, though he loses nothing of the king's son. If a young gallant of the first fashion were asked to shoe a horse, or hold a plough, or fell a tree, he would make a very awkward business of the first experiment. I saw a set of young naval officers, very genteel-looking young men, playing at rackets not long ago, and it is impossible to describe the uncouthness of their motions, and unaccountable contrivances for hitting the ball.Something effeminate as well as common-place, then, enters into the composition of the gentleman: he is a little of the petit-maître in his pretensions. He is only graceful and accomplished in those things to which he has paid almost his whole attention, such as the carriage of his body, and adjustment of his dress; and to which he is of sufficient importance in the scale of society to attract the idle attention of others.

en

A man's manner of presenting himself in company is but a superficial test of his real qualifications. Serjeant Atkinson, we are assured by Fielding, would have marched, at the head of his platoon, up to a masked battery, with less apprehension than he came into a room full of pretty women. So we may sometimes see persons look foolish enough on tering a party, or returning a salutation, who instantly feel themselves at home, and recover all their selfpossession, as soon as any of that sort of conversation begins from which nine-tenths of the company retire in the extremest trepidation, lest they should betray their ignorance or incapacity. A high spirit and stubborn pride are often accompanied with an unprepossessing and unpretending appearance. The greatest heroes do not show it by their looks.-There are individuals of a nervous habit, who might be said to abhor their own persons, and to startle at their own appearance, as the peacock tries to hide its legs. They are always shy, uncomfortable, restless; and all their actions are, in a manner, at cross-purposes with themselves. This, of course, destroys the look we are speaking of, from the want of ease and selfconfidence. There is another sort who

have too much negligence of manner and contempt for formal punctilios. They take their full swing in whatever they are about, and make it seem almost necessary to get out of their way.--Perhaps something of this bold, licentious, slovenly, lounging character may be objected by a fastidious eye to the appearance of Lord C-. It might be said of him, without disparagement, that he looks more like a lord than like a gentleman. We see nothing petty or finical, as◄ suredly,--nothing hard-bound or reined-in,--but a flowing outline, a broad, free style. He sits in the House of Commons, with his hat slouched over his forehead, and a sort of stoop in his shoulders, as if he cowered over his antagonists, like a bird of prey over its quarry,—"] -" hatching vain em◄ pires." There is an irregular grandeur about him, an unwieldy power, loose, disjointed, "voluminous and vast,' -coiled up in the folds of its own purposes,-cold, death-like, smooth, and smiling,-that is neither quite at ease with itself, nor safe for others to approach! On the other hand, there is the Marquis Wellesley, a jewel of a man. He advances into his place in the House of Lords, with head erect, and his best foot foremost. The star sparkles on his breast, and the garter is seen bound tight below his knee. It might be thought that he still trod a measure on soft carpets, and was surrounded, not only by spiritual and temporal lords, but

ess, insincere, pleased, affected, a miable! The French physiognomy is more cut up and subdivided into petty lines, and sharp angles than any other: it does not want for subtlety, or an air of gentility, which last it often has in a remarkable degree, but it is the most unpoetical and the least picturesque of all others. -I cannot explain what I mean by this variable telegraphic machinery of polite expression better than by an obvious allusion. Every one by walking the streets of London (or any other populous city) acquires a walk which is easily distinguished from that of strangers; a quick flexibility of movement, a smart jerk, an aspiring and confident tread, and an air, as if determined to keep the line of march; but for all that, there is not much grace or grandeur in this local strut: you see the person is not a country bumpkin, but you would not say, he is a hero or a sage, because he is a cockney. So it is in passing through the artificial and thickly peopled scenes of life. You get the look of a man of the world: you rub off the pedant and the clown; but you do not make much progress in wisdom or virtue, or in the characteristic expression of either.

The character of a gentleman (I take it) may be explained nearly thus:-A blackguard (un vaurien,) is a fellow who does not care whom he offends; a clown is a blockhead who does not know when he offends: a gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them. Politeness, and the pretensions to the character in question, have reference almost entirely to this reciprocal mamifestation of good-will and good opinion towards each other in casual society. Morality regulates our sentiments and conduct as they have a connection with ultimate and important consequences:-Manners, properly speaking, regulate our words and actions in the routine of personal intercourse. They have little to do with real kindness of intention, or practical services, or disinterested sacrifices; but they put on the garb, and mock the appearance of these, in order to prevent a breach of the peace, and to smooth and varnish over the discordant materials, when any number of individuals are brought

in contact together. The conven tional compact of good manners does not reach beyond the moment and the company. Say, for instance, that the rabble, the labouring and industrious part of the community, are taken up with supplying their own wants, and pining over their own hardships,-scrambling for what they can get, and not refining on any of their pleasures, or troubling themselves about the fastidious pretensions of others: again, there are philosophers who are busied in the pursuit of truth,—or patriots who are active for the good of their country; but here, we will suppose, are a parcel of people got together who having no serious wants of their own, with leisure and independence, and caring little about abstract truth or prac tical utility, are met for no mortal purpose but to say, and to do all manner of obliging things, to pay the greatest possible respect, and show the most delicate and flattering attentions to one another. The po litest set of gentlemen and ladies in the world can do no more than this. The laws that regulate this species of artificial and fantastic society are conformable to its ends and origin. The fine gentleman or lady must not, on any account, say a rude thing to the persons present, but you may turn them into the utmost ridicule the instant they are gone: nay, not to do so is sometimes considered as an indirect slight to the party that remains. You must compliment your bitterest foe to his face, and may slander your dearest friend behind his back. The last may be immoral, but it is not unmannerly. The gallant maintains his title to this character by treating every woman he meets with the same marked and unremitting attention as if she was his mistress: the courtier treats every man with the same professions of esteem and kindness as if he was an accom plice with him in some plot against mankind. Of course, these profes sions, made only to please, go for nothing in practice. To insist on them afterwards as literal obliga. tions, would be to betray an ignorance of this kind of interlude, or masquerading in real life. To ruin your friend at play is not inconsistent with the character of a gentleman and a man of honour, if it is done with civility; though to warn him of

his danger, so as to imply a donbt of his judgment, or interference with his will, would be to subject yourself to be run through the body with a sword. It is that which wounds the self-love of the individual that is offensive-that which flatters it that is welcome-however salutary the one, or however fatal the other may be. A habit of plain-speaking is totally contrary to the tone of goodbreeding. You must prefer the opinion of the company to your own, and even to truth. I doubt whether a gentleman must not be of the established church, and a Tory. A true cavalier can only be a martyr to the fashion. A Whig lord appears to me as great an anomaly as a patriotking. A sectary is sour and unsociable. A philosopher is quite out of the question. He is in the clouds, and had better not be let down on the floor in a basket, to play the blockhead. He is sure to commit himself in good company and by dealing always in abstractions, and driving at generalities, to offend against the three proprieties of time, place, and person. Authors are angry, loud, and vehement in argument: the man of more refined breeding, who has been "all tranquillity and smiles," goes away, and tries to ruin the antagonist whom he could not vanquish in a dispute. The manners of a court, and of polished life, are by no means down right, strait-forward, but the contrary. They have something dramatic in them; each person plays an assumed part; the affected, overstrained politeness, and suppression of real sentiment, lead to concealed irony, and the spirit of satire and raillery; and hence we may account for the perfection of the genteel comedy of the century before the last, when poets mingled in the court-circles, and took their cue from the splendid ring

Of mimic statesmen and their merry king. The essence of this sort of conver

sation and intercourse, both on and off the stage, has somehow since evaporated; the disguises of royalty, nobility, gentry have been in some measure seen through: we have individually become of little importance, compared with greater objects, in the eyes of our neighbours, and even in our own: abstract topics, not personal pretensions, are the order of the day; so that what remains of the character we have been talking of, is chiefly exotic and provincial, and may be seen still flourishing in country places, in a wholesome, vegetable state of decay.

A

A man may have the manners of a gentleman without having the look, and he may have the character of a gentleman, in a more abstracted point of view, without the manners. The feelings of a gentleman, in this innate sense, only denote a more refined humanity-a spirit delicate in itself, and unwilling to offend, either in the greatest or the smallest things. This may be coupled with absence of mind, with ignorance of forms, and frequent blunders. But the will is good. The spring of gentle offices and true regards is untainted. person of this stamp blushes at an impropriety he was guilty of twenty years before, though he is, perhaps, liable to repeat it to-morrow. never forgives himself for even a slip of the tongue, that implies an assumption of superiority over any one. In proportion to the concessions made to him, he lowers his demands. He gives the wall to a beggar:* but does not always bow to great men. This class of character have been called "God Almighty's gentlemen." There are not a great many of them. The late G-D. one ;-for we understand that that gentleman was not able to survive some ill-disposed person's having asserted of him, that he had mistaken Lord Castlereagh for the author of Waverley.T.

He

-was