The Squire, as Frank Bracebridge informs me, would often hold forth in this manner to his sons, when they were about leaving the paternal roof; one to travel abroad, one to go to the army, and one to the university.  He used to have them with him in the library, which is hung with the portraits of Sidney, Surrey, Raleigh, Wyat, and others.  “Look at those models of true English gentlemen, my sons,” he would say with enthusiasm; “those were men that wreathed the graces of the most delicate and refined taste around the stern virtues of the soldier; that mingled what was gentle and gracious, with what was hardy and manly; that possessed the true chivalry of spirit, which is the exalted essence of manhood.  They are the lights by which the youth of the country should array themselves.  They were the patterns and idols of their country at home; they were the illustrators of its dignity abroad.  ‘Surrey,’ says Camden, ’was the first nobleman that illustrated his high birth with the beauty of learning.  He was acknowledged to be the gallantest man, the politest lover, and the completest gentleman of his time.’  And as to Wyat, his friend Surrey most amiably testifies of him, that his person was majestic and beautiful, his visage ’stern and mild;’ that he sung, and played the lute with remarkable sweetness; spoke foreign languages with grace and fluency, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of wit.  And see what a high commendation is passed upon these illustrious friends:  ’They were the two chieftains, who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poetry, greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poetry from what it had been before, and therefore may be justly called the reformers of our English poetry and style.’  And Sir Philip Sidney, who has left us such monuments of elegant thought, and generous sentiment, and who illustrated his chivalrous spirit so gloriously in the field.  And Sir Walter Raleigh, the elegant courtier, the intrepid soldier, the enterprising discoverer, the enlightened philosopher, the magnanimous martyr.  These are the men for English gentlemen to study.  Chesterfield, with his cold and courtly maxims, would have chilled and impoverished such spirits.  He would have blighted all the budding romance of their temperaments.  Sidney would never have written his Arcadia, nor Surrey have challenged the world in vindication of the beauties of his Geraldine.  “These are the men, my sons,” the Squire will continue, “that show to what our national character may be exalted, when its strong and powerful qualities are duly wrought up and refined.  The solidest bodies are capable of the highest polish; and there is no character that may be wrought to a more exquisite and unsullied brightness, than that of the true English gentleman.”