a person may be a gentleman and a scholar without them.  Rank, wealth, fine clothes, and dignified employments, are no doubt very fine things, but they are merely externals, they do not make a gentleman, they add external grace and dignity to the gentleman and scholar, but they make neither; and is it not better to be a gentleman without them than not a gentleman with them?  Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million?  And is not even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro for his horse, entitled to more than the scoundrel lord, who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value?

Millions, however, seem to think otherwise, by their servile adoration of people whom without rank, wealth, and fine clothes they would consider infamous, but whom possessed of rank, wealth, and glittering habiliments they seem to admire all the more for their profligacy and crimes.  Does not a blood-spot, or a lust-spot, on the clothes of a blooming emperor, give a kind of zest to the genteel young god?  Do not the pride, superciliousness, and selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded by its worshippers? and do not the clownish and gutter-blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are conscious that he is a knave?  If such is the case —­and, alas! is it not the case?—­they cannot be too frequently told that fine clothes, wealth, and titles adorn a person in proportion as he adorns them; that if worn by the magnanimous and good they are ornaments indeed, but if by the vile and profligate they are merely san benitos, and only serve to make their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled to more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested than any cruel profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish millionaire in the world.

The writer has no intention of saying that all in England are affected with the absurd mania for gentility; nor is such a statement made in the book; it is shown therein that individuals of certain classes can prize a gentleman, notwithstanding seedy raiment, dusty shoes or tattered hat,—­for example, the young Irishman, the rich genius, the postillion, and his employer.  Again, when the life of the hero is given to the world, amidst the howl about its lowness and vulgarity, raised by the servile crew whom its independence of sentiment has stung, more than one powerful voice has been heard testifying approbation of its learning and the purity of its morality.  That there is some salt in England, minds not swayed by mere externals, he is fully convinced; if he were not, he would spare himself the trouble of writing; but to the fact that the generality of his countrymen are basely grovelling before the shrine of what they are pleased to call gentility, he cannot shut his eyes.