yed for. He
was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so that in due time
others might obey him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate diet
with rare use of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be avoided.
Rather should the youth give himself to be merry, so as not to
degenerate from his father. Above all things should he keep his wit from
biting words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind. Had not nature
ramparted up the tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as reins and
bridles against the tongue's loose use. Heeding this, he must be sure to
tell no untruth even in trifles; for that was a naughty custom, nor
could there be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a
liar. _Noblesse oblige_ formed the keynote of the oral and written
precepts with which the future Sir Philip Sidney was paternally
supplied. By his mother, too, Lady Mary Dudley, the boy must remember
himself to be of noble blood. Let him beware, therefore, through sloth
and vice, of being accounted a blemish on his race."

Furthermore, the brotherly and sisterly relations of Tresham and Mildred
are not unlike those of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary. They
studied and worked together in great sympathy, broken into only by the
tragic fate of Sir Philip. Although the education of women in those days
was chiefly domestic, with a smattering of accomplishments, yet there
were exceptional girls who aspired to learning and who became brilliant
women. Mildred under her brother's tutelage bid fare to be one of this
sort.

The ideals of the Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals.
Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not
recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The
slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in
society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been
universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to
repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and
Browning is quite right in his portrayal of an eighteenth-century knight
_sans peur et sans reproche_ who defends the honor of his house with his
sword, because of his high moral ideals. Besides, the Methodist revival
led by the Wesleys gained constantly in power. It affected not only the
people of the middle and lower classes, rescuing them from brutality of
mind and manners, but it affected the established church for the bet