any correlative abstract to express the
quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must
keep alive in the vernacular the distinction between fashion, a word of
narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the
gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be respected;
they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point of
distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion,
and the like, is that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree,
are contemplated. It is beauty which is the aim this time, and not
worth. The result is now in question, although our words intimate well
enough the popular feeling that the appearance supposes a substance.
The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing
that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile,
either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this fact of
truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature or benevolence:
manhood first, and then gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a
condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal
force and love, that they should possess and dispense the goods of the
world. In times of violence, every eminent person must fall in with many
opportunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's
name that emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in
our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out
of fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and in the moving crowd of
good society the men of valor and reality are known and rise to their
natural place. The competition is transferred from war to politics
and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in these new
arenas.

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, bruisers and
pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks. God knows
that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in
strictness and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point
at original energy. It describes a man standing in his own right and
working after untaught methods. In a good lord there must first be
a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable
advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, but they
must have these, giving in every company the sense of power, which
makes things easy to be done which daunt the wise.