Refreshment under such circumstances was doubly needed; and the popular gratitude was due to that most serviceable of knights, Sir Thomas Gresham, who introduced the orange as an article of trade, and who was consequently painted by Antonio More with an orange in his hand. The old Utrecht artist just named, was knighted by Charles V. who paid him poorly--some six hundred ducats for three pictures, but added knighthood, which cost the emperor nothing, and was esteemed of great value by the painter. One would imagine that under Mary and Elizabeth, knighthood had become extinguished, were we to judge by an anonymous volume which was published in Mary’s reign, and republished in that of Elizabeth. The great names of that period are proof to the contrary, but there may have been exceptions. Let us then look into the volume of this unknown writer who bewails the degeneracy of his times, and lays down what he entitles the “Institution of a Gentleman.” “THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN.” “Your countenance, though it be glossed with knighthood, looks so borrowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as ‘stand and deliver.’”--_The Asparagus Garden._ The unknown author of the “Institution of a Gentleman,” dedicates his able treatise to “Lorde Fitzwater, sonne and heire to the Duke of Sussex.” In his dedicatory epistle he does not so much mourn over a general decay of manners, as over the lamentable fact, that the lowly-born are rising to gentility, while nobility and knighthood are going to decay. These he beseeches “to build gentry up again, which is, for truth sore decayed, and fallen to great ruin, whereby such great corruption of manners hath taken place, that almost the name of gentleman is quenched, and handicraftsmen have obtained the title of honor, though (indeed) of themselves they can challenge no greater worthiness than the spade brought unto their late fathers.” The writer is troubled with the same matter in his introductory chapter. This chapter shows how, at this time, trade was taking equality with gentry. “Yea, the merchantman thinketh not himself well-bred unless he be called one of the worshipful sort of merchants, of whom the handicraftsman hath taken example; and taketh to be called ‘Master,’ whose father and grandfather were wont to be called ‘Good Man.’” On the question of “What is a gentleman?” the author goes back to a very remote period, that of Adam, quoting the old saying:-- “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” and he makes the following comment upon this well-known text: