ifferent classes; by one class, power, youth, and epaulets
are considered the _ne plus ultra_ of gentility; by another class, pride,
stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But
what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes
a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, {331}
as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are
high feeling, a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of
another, a liberal education, absence of narrow views, generosity and
courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according
to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess
one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the Emperor a gentleman,
with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble
Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is
Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly
miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a
million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make
fortunes by the getters-up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest
dealing, are decidedly not gentle-folks. Now, as it is clearly
demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some
standard or other and yet be no gentleman, so is it demonstrable that a
person may have no pretensions to gentility and yet be a gentleman. For
example there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the Emperor, or the
admirers of those who admire the Emperor, or the admirers of Mr. Flamson,
call him genteel?--and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they
would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being
to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why, at one time he is a
hack author--writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page--edits a Newgate
chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from
occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes
are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what
process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman! Is he not
learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author does
he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to
his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or
lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst