variis artibus et opificiis, in vestibus, calceamentis, vasis, et cujusque modi fabricationibus, picturis etiam diversisque figmentis, atque his usum necessarium atque moderatum et piam significationem longe transgredientibus, addiderunt homines ad illecebras oculorum!” The modern gentleman of our own land will remember with pride that he does not derive his title exclusively from the social virtues of Hellenism. There was an aboriginal substrate which provided the nursery for a more pretentious importation. Before the Roman soldier or the Roman culture had passed into these islands there were gentlefolk of a sort, people of quality with an innate sensibility of the finer things around them. Men of letters like Herodian or Dion Cassius were at pains to give a studied misrepresentation of the distant islanders. A patriotic Scotsman attributes to pardonable superstition such descriptions of the Caledonian of Roman times as include him in a species of "semi-aquatic animal, who passed the greater portion of his time swimming in the lochs." Greek romance and the tales of far-travelled men boldly discoursed of one-footed folk and of strange fantasies in the royal line of Thule. "They" (the ancients), says Gibbon, "sometimes amused their fancy by filling the vacant spaces with headless men, or rather monsters, with horrid and cloven-footed satyrs, with fabulous centaurs, and with human pigmies, who waged a bold and doubtful warfare against the cranes." Of fiction and fairy tale of this sort nothing can be made; all we have to go upon in the way of conjecture are the Kjokkenmoddings or kitchen middens, the relics of the Drift Age, yet even this prehistoric epoch has its affinity with the later ages of culture. "Even if many links in the chain that binds the present to the past be lost, notwithstanding the facility with which the Scot has been credited for constructing a pedigree, we have doubtless his living representative among us still, were we only acute enough to discover him." A rudimentary conception of art expressed itself in homely and natural fashion. Lubbock speaks of the passion for self-ornamentation as prevailing among the lowest, as much as if not more than among the more civilised races of mankind. Another historian finds in the beads and amulets of the gravel deposits, in the charnel houses of a rude and hoary antiquity, in the rudely ornamented urns, in the axe-heads of exquisite workmanship, in the mouldering relics of the funeral feast, an expression of the ambition to realise one's strength in the contemplation of the work of one's hands, an impressive monitor "that so it has been 'Mackinnon, Culture in Early Scotland. 2 Origin of Civilisation. from of yore, for the same soul moves in primeval savage and modern philosopher, though it reveals itself after a different fashion.” The West slowly took the impression of Roman culture. It passed from Gaul to the British shores; and for long it was accounted the fascination of a magic for the undoing of liberty, a delicious but resistless power. That Thule possessed a professor for itself is probably no more than the fancy of Martial and Juvenal, but that Britain was the conquest of the Gallic schoolmaster is one side of sober truth. It would be idle to look for any great refinement of taste among a wild untamed people who were as yet only the bewildered spectators of an invader who came with stranger and more potent weapons than the sword and flaming brand. When at length the glory of the new culture and the religion of Christ had stirred them to emulation, they turned to the building of abiding monuments, which with their grave and decorous proportions were the silent prophets of the triumphs of western architecture. The genius and culture of every age have studied to reproduce themselves in the elegance and magnificence of public buildings. "L'architecture a été jusqu'au quinzième siècle le registre principal de l'humanité. . . toute idée populaire comme toute loi religieuse a eu ses monuments; le genre humain enfin n'a rien pensé d'important qu'il ne l'ait écrit en pierre . . . L'architecture est le grand livre de l'humanité, l'expression principale de l'homme à ses divers états de développement, soit comme force, soit comme intelligence." Romance has made King Arthur the centre of a large cycle of legends, and the character of the king has been woven at the poet's pleasure and fancy to wear well on soldier, saint, or gentleman. He was born of some ancient God, the idol of bardic enthusiasm, but under the hand of Geoffrey rose into splendid prominence in mediæval romance. At the end of the twelfth century, when a historian had to clothe his thoughts in language suitable to the exacting taste of the gentle life, Joceline, the monk of Furness Abbey, made a biography of the less shadowy figure of Kentigern. It was his business to present to his readers not so much a saint as the hero of a modern novel, "to clothe so precious a treasure, if not in gold tissue and silk at least in clean linen." Of Kentigern himself nothing can be known with any certainty: it is doubtful if his rigid asceticism would fall in with the easy sentiments of the gay gentleman in orders a span of centuries later. His chatty biographer records of him that 1 Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris. "the sight or touch of the most beautiful maiden had no more effect upon him than the hardest flint." For the age of the biographer we expect this was a most unpalatable reminiscence-even of a saint. We are not surprised to find that the Celtic monk savoured more of the gentleman than the Calvinistic Puritan. He tempered his piety with that cool sense of refreshment which King James sighed for in the Presbyterianism of his Northern Kingdom. The Celt indulged the human passion for ornament, and his piety glowed from an environment dainty and delicate with a hundred and one pleasing trifles. "Even yet," says Dr. Mackinnon, "it requires no small courage on the part of the candidate for the favour of a Presbyterian congregation to appear on the day of the preaching match with a ring on his finger! I have known more than one aspirant for a parish who was prudent enough to denude himself of this emblem of worldliness, and carry it in his vest pocket for the occasion." But those innocent concessions to refined habits of living did nothing to traduce the Celtic monk from the purpose of his calling. By an ingenious trick of plastic art, the representations of Pagan mythology were enlisted in the service of the Christian Church. The gorgeous bestiaries of the Middle Ages are traceable to the cultivation of morality by the symbolism of animal life. The centaurs and winged genii were but the old Pagan pictures set in a new frame. Orpheus was rapidly converted into the Good Shepherd, and the dragon which guarded Andromeda made a tolerable whale of sufficient capacity at least for Jonah. That immortal allegory, richly sculptured, served the ecclesiastics well when speech was helpless before the great mysteries of religion. It may have been a little crude, but as a symbol of the resurrection the interpretation was unmistakable and irresistible. Those who wish to harvest all the attainable information of a bygone culture must examine with their own eyes the quaint museum of curios that tell their own story of the gentle. life of the dark centuries. EPILOGUE. The eighteenth century, the century of gentlemen, is most representative of the style and sentiment of modern gentility. The preceding centuries contented themselves rather with conning isolated lessons learned from the old schools of fashion and culture. There is to be found a curious gentry in the pages of history and romance; a robuster sort typified by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, a man of letters who combined his bookish tastes with a genius for intrigue in politics and the embarrassments of love. There are the gentle VOL. CCXCI. NO. 2048. P pilgrims of Chaucer's creation, who rode upon a day to Canterbury in all the bravery in which the observant worldly wise poet set them forth. There are the bold knights who could pay the prettiest compliments to the Virgin Queen, and win or lose a fortune in the high seas with the reckless gaiety of the pirate who was nothing if not a gentleman. There are the knavish gentlemen of history like Wharton, whose manners were shining and irresistible, who was nevertheless, in the conceit of the old Tory, "the most universal villain I ever knew "-the Satan of apostate Whiggism. But my Lord Chesterfield of the eighteenth century is the best epilogue of the fine sentiment. He gathers together all the subject matter pertaining to it, and presents his son with the ethics of gentility in a body of precise and terse laws. In his advice there is a punctiliousness that would bear comparison with Aristotle, though further comparison is impossible in the matter of morals. Such comments as the following must have a familiar ring to those who are on much less intimate terms with Aristotle's Ethics than with their Bible: "To conclude this article: never walk fast in the street, which is a mark of vulgarity, ill befitting the character of a gentleman or a man of fashion, though it may be tolerable in a tradesman;" or, "In my mind there is nothing so illiberal and so ill bred as audible laughter. It is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense or breeding should show themselves above." It was Chesterfield's experience, he tells his son, that virtue to keep its lustre must be polished like gold. But the furbished virtues must shower their blandishments on all, not merely on "shining and distinguished figures, such as ministers, wits, and beauties." The common run of ugly women and middling men were to be courted with the same assiduity, for that was the price of popularity and general applause. Mauvaise honte was productive only of bitter animosities. "I have been in this case, and often wished an obscure acquaintance at the devil for meeting and taking notice of me, when I was in what I thought and called fine company." But the results he found were unpleasant. Music, to be sure, was a liberal art, but a man piping himself at a concert was in degradation. A gentleman should pay the fiddler, but never fiddle himself! His observation on the ostentation of learning is very shrewd and discerning: "Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one." Polished and shining manners are prelude and burden of the strain; but nothing overmuch, mannered or moralled. "We may shine," says my lord, "like the sun in the temperate zone, without scorching." DANIEL JOHNSTON. THE RED KING'S DREAM. "If he left off dreaming," Tweedledee retorted, "you'd be nowhere. You're only a sort of thing in his dream. If that king was to wake you'd go out like a candle."-Thro' the Looking Glass. N IGHT'S hush-and all the deep blush roses pale, The valley steeped in dew, and o'er the hill Now keeping vigil. Low there sets the star And some faint streak of grey, from East afar, Not for one watch alone, but brightly gleam Or are we always phantoms in a dream? Whose dream? My dream? Surely the dream is mine Love! I would rather that the dream was thine Than I without thee walked Love's living way! Our dream? Then, waking, shall each cease to be? When day shall dawn will not my love for thee Know all that source of truth whence comes the true? O Red King, dreaming! what are we and ours |