You and I, dear Miss Smith, know the exact value of heraldic bearings.  We know that though the greatest pleasure of all is to act like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to be one—­to come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedigree, to be able to say that centuries back our fathers had gentle blood, and to us transmitted the same.  There is a good in gentility:  the man who questions it is envious, or a coarse dullard not able to perceive the difference between high breeding and low.  One has in the same way heard a man brag that he did not know the difference between wines, not he—­give him a good glass of port, and he would pitch all your claret to the deuce.  My love, men often brag about their own dulness in this way.

In the matter of gentlemen, democrats cry, “Psha!  Give us one of Nature’s gentlemen, and hang your aristocrats.”  And so indeed Nature does make some gentlemen—­a few here and there.  But Art makes most.  Good birth, that is, good handsome well-formed fathers and mothers, nice cleanly nursery-maids, good meals, good physicians, good education, few cares, pleasant easy habits of life, and luxuries not too great or enervating, but only refining—­a course of these going on for a few generations are the best gentleman-makers in the world, and beat Nature hollow.

If, respected Madam, you say that there is something better than gentility in this wicked world, and that honesty and personal wealth are more valuable than all the politeness and high-breeding that ever wore red-heeled pumps, knights’ spurs, or Hoby’s boots, Titmarsh for one is never going to say you nay.  If you even go so far as to say that the very existence of this super-genteel society among us, from the slavish respect that we pay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we attempt to imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy honesty of intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natural affections and honest, harmless usages, and so does a great deal more harm than it is possible it can do good by its example—­perhaps, Madam, you speak with some sort of reason.  Potato myself, I can’t help seeing that the tulip yonder has the best place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the most water, and the best tending—­and not liking him over well.  But I can’t help acknowledging that Nature has given him a much finer dress than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at least, must give him the benefit.

Or say, we are so many cocks and hens, my dear (sans arriere pensee), with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, and tolerable snug roosting in the barn:  yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail.  Don’t let us be too angry, my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because he despises us.  Something