While allowing that gentlemanly manners help to make the gentleman, and that birth is only an accidental matter, having little to do with the subject, he still can not forbear to reverence rather good men of high birth than good men of low degree. He evidently thinks that he was enjoined by religion to do so, for he remarks: “As in times past, no man was suffered to be ‘Knyght of the Roodes,’ but such one as was descended of the lyne of gentleman, whereby it appeareth that no men were thought so meet to defend the right, that is to say the faith of Christ, as gentlemen, and so to have their offices agreeable with their profession, it is most meet that all gentlemen be called to such room and office as may be profitable to the commonwealth.” This idea that the holy sepulchre was to be rescued from the infidels only by gentlemen, and the fact that it has not been so rescued, reminds me of that king of Spain, who, finding himself in danger of being roasted alive, from sitting in a chair which one of his great officers had placed too near the fire, chose to roast on, for the singular reason that there was no grandee at hand to draw his chair away again! In 1555, this writer still accounted the profession of arms as the noblest, the most profitable to the professor, and the most useful to the commonwealth. Courage, liberality, and faithful observance of all promises; thus endowed, he thinks a man is a true gentleman. He draws, however, a happy parallel when admitting that if it become a gentleman to be a good knight and valiant soldier, it even more becometh him to be a great statesman. For, “although to do valiantly in the wars it deserveth great praise and recompense, yet to minister justice in the state of peace is an office worthy of higher commendation. The reason is, wars are nothing necessary, but of necessity must be defended when they fall. And contrariwise, peace is a thing not only most necessary, but it is called the best thing which even nature hath given unto man.” This parallel, if indeed it may be so called, is only employed, however, for the purpose of showing that certain posts in the state should only be given to gentlemen born. There is a good deal of the red-tapist in our moralist after all; and he has a horror, still entertained in certain localities, of admitting the democratic element into the public offices. Thus we find him maintaining that, “Unto a gentleman appertaineth more fully than unto any other sort of man, embassage or message to be done between kings or princes of this earth; more fitly I say, because gentlemen do know how to bear countenance and comely gesture before the majesty of a king, better than other sorts of men.” One would think that the majesty of a king was something too dazzling for a common man of common sense to look upon and live, and yet the writer is evidently aware that there is nothing in it, for he concludes his chapter on this matter by observing that “a gentleman