It is a matter for conjecture whether the worthy merchant was capable of forming an opinion as to the boy’s progress in this particular study, or whether he was himself a very good judge of the variety he so much admired. Our own idea is, that neither birth, nor riches, nor education, nor manner, suffice to constitute a gentleman; and that specimens are to be found at the plough, the loom, and the forge, in the ranks, and before the mast, as well as in the officers’ mess-room, the learned professions, and the Upper House itself. To our fancy, a gentleman is courteous, kindly, brave, and high-principled--considerate towards the weak, and self-possessed amongst the strong. High-minded and unselfish, “he does to others as he would they should do unto him,” and shrinks from the meanness of taking advantage of his neighbour, man or woman, friend or foe, as he would from the contamination of cowardice, duplicity, tyranny, or any other blackguardism. “_Sans peur et sans reproche_”--he has a “lion’s courage with a woman’s heart”; and such a one, be he in a peer’s robes or a ploughman’s smock--backing before his sovereign or delving for his bread--we deem a very Bayard for chivalry--a very Chesterfield for good breeding and good sense. We are old-fashioned though in our ideas, and doubtless our sentiments may be dubbed slow by the young, and vulgar by the great. Still, even these dissentients would, we think, have been satisfied with “Cousin Charlie’s” claims to be considered a “gentleman.” Nature had been beforehand with old Kettering, and had made him one of her own mould. Not all the schools in Europe could have spoiled or improved him in that particular. And his private tutor’s lady discovered this quality, with all a woman’s intuitive tact, the very first evening he spent at the vicarage of that reverend Crichton, who prepared young gentlemen of fifteen years and upwards for _both_ the universities and _all_ the professions. “What do you think of the new pupil, my dear?” said Mr. Nobottle to his wife--a dean’s daughter, no less!--as he drew up the connubial counterpane to meet the edge of his night-cap. “He was a wild lad, I hear, at Eton. I am afraid we shall have some trouble with him.” “Not a bit of it,” was the reply; “he is a gentleman every inch of him. I saw it at once by the way he helped Tim in with his portmanteau. Binks, of course, was out of the way,--and that reminds me, Mr. Nobottle, you never _will_ speak to that man,--what’s the use of having a butler? And then, he’s such a remarkably good-looking boy--but I daresay you’re half asleep already.” And, sure enough, patient Joseph Nobottle was executing a prolonged and marital snore. Mrs. Nobottle found no occasion to recant her predictions; and Charlie was now spending his summer vacation with Mrs. Kettering at St. Swithin’s.