A French writer has said:  “To be truly polite, it is necessary to be, at the same time, good, just, and generous.  True politeness is the outward visible sign of those inward spiritual graces called modesty, unselfishness and generosity.  The manners of a gentleman are the index of his soul.  His speech is innocent, because his life is pure; his thoughts are right, because his actions are upright; his bearing is gentle, because his feelings, his impulses, and his training are gentle also.  A gentleman is entirely free from every kind of pretence.  He avoids homage, instead of exacting it.  Mere ceremonies have no attraction for him.  He seeks not to say any civil things, but to do them.  His hospitality, though hearty and sincere, will be strictly regulated by his means.  His friends will be chosen for their good qualities and good manners; his servants for their truthfulness and honesty; his occupations for their usefulness, their gracefulness or their elevating tendencies, whether moral, mental or political.”

In the same general tone does Ruskin describe a gentleman, when he says:  “A gentleman’s first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation, and of that structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies—­one may say, simply, ‘fineness of nature.’  This is, of course, compatible with the heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.  Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer’s Atrides would have felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feelings in the glow of battle and behave itself like iron.  I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—­not in his insensitive hide nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his sensitive trunk and still more sensitive mind and capability of pique on points of honor.  Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and mercifulness, these always indicating more or less firmness of make in the mind.”

Can any one fancy what our society might be, if all its members were perfect gentlemen and true ladies, if all the inhabitants of the earth were kind-hearted; if, instead of contending with the faults of our fellows we were each to wage war against our own faults?  Every one needs to guard constantly against the evil from within as well as from without, for as has been truly said, “a man’s greatest foe dwells in his own heart.”