VERONICA.

According to the Heralds’ College law a person to be a gentleman must belong to a family that has borne a coat-of-arms for five generations. That implies ancient descent; hence the hackneys proverb, “Jack will never make a gentleman,” why old Bailey quaintly interprets – “That every one will not make a Gentleman, that is vulgarly called so, now-a-days: There is more than the bare name required, to the making him what he ought to be by Birth, Honour and Merit; for let a Man get never so much Money to but an Estate, he cannot purchase one Grain of GENTILITY.” So that the mere possession on wealth never made a gentleman, and never will. But the Heralds’ College law is somewhat obsolete for brains now confer the honour which birth formally did; and the “poor” gentleman of the Minted novels is quite antiquated, not only in England but in pedigree-loving Scotland. The Social and legal etiquette of our day is led to style every one of education, refinement, and respectable status who does not follow menial or mechanical employment, a gentleman. “Born gentility,” without Land and tenements, went out of fashion when literally science, steam, gas, railways, and the electric-telegraph came in. Knowledge is a terrible levelling of arbitrary distinctions. It has the grand audacity to set a Watt or an Arkwright above a Douglas Russell.

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