in life, and in his ordinary intercourse with society, has had little else to do than to study those movements, and that carriage of the body, which were accompanied with most satisfaction to himself, and were calculated to excite the approbation of the beholder. Ease, it might be observed, is not enough; dignity is too much. There must be a certain retenu, a conscious decorum added to the first,-and a certain "familiarity of regard, quenching the austere countenance of control," in the second, to answer to our conception of this character. Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings!

Wherever this constant and decent subjection of the body to the mind is visible in the customary actions of walking, sitting, riding, standing, speaking, etc. we draw the same conclusion as to the individual-whatever may be the impediments or unavoidable defects in the machine, of which he has the management. A man may have a mean or

disagreeable exterior, may halt in his gait, or have lost the use of half his limbs; and yet he may shew this habitual attention to what is graceful and becoming in the use he makes of all the power he has left-in the "nice conduct" of the most unpromising and impracticable figure. A hump-backed or deformed man does not necessarily look like a clown or a mechanic; on the contrary, from his care in the adjustment of his appearance, and his desire to remedy his defects, he for the most part acquires something of the look of a gentleman. The common nick-name of My Lord, applied to such persons, has allusion to this to their circumspect deportment, and tacit resistance to vulgar prejudice. Lord Ogleby, in the Clandestine Marriage, is as crazy a piece of elegance and refinement, even after he is "wound up for the day," as can well be imagined; yet in the hands of a genuine actor, his tottering step, his twitches of the gout, his unsuccessful attempts at youth and gaiety take nothing from the nobleman. He has the ideal model in his mind, resents his deviations from it with proper horror, recovers himself

from any ungraceful action as soon as possible; does all he can with his limited means, and fails in his just pretensions, not from inadvertence, but necessity. Sir Joseph Banks, who was almost bent double, retained to the last the look of a privy-counsellor. There was all the firmness and dignity that could be given by the sense of his own importance to so distorted and disabled a trunk. Sir Charles Bunbury, as he saunters down St. James'sstreet, with a large slouched hat, a lack-lustre eye and aquiline nose, an old shabby drabcoloured coat, buttoned across his breast without a cape-with old top-boots, and his hands in his waistcoat or breeches' pockets, as if he were strolling along his own gardenwalks, or over the turf at Newmarket, after having made his bets secure-presents nothing very dazzling, or graceful, or dignified to the imagination; though you can tell infallibly at the first glance, or even a bowshot off, that he is a gentleman of the first water (the same that sixty years ago married the beautiful Lady Sarah L-nn-x, with whom the king was in love). What is the clue to this mystery?

It is evident that his person costs him no more trouble than an old glove. His limbs are, from long practice, left to take care of themselves; they move of their own accord; he does not strut or stand on tip-toe to shew

"how tall

His person is above them all ;”.

but he seems to find his own level, and whereever he is, to slide into his place naturally; he is equally at home among lords or gamblers; nothing can discompose his fixed serenity of look and purpose; there is no mark of superciliousness about him, nor does it appear as if any thing could meet his eye to startle or throw him off his guard; he neither avoids nor courts notice; but the archaism of his dress may be understood to denote a lingering partiality for the costume of the last age, and something like a prescriptive contempt for the finery of this. The old one-eyed Duke of Queensberry is another example that I might quote. As he sat in his bow-window in Piccadilly, erect and emaciated, he seemed like a nobleman framed and glazed, or a welldressed mummy of the court of George II.

We have few of these precious specimens of the gentleman or nobleman-look now remaining; other considerations have set aside the exclusive importance of the character, and of course, the jealous attention to the outward expression of it. Where we oftenest meet with it now-a-days, is, perhaps, in the butlers in old families, or the valets and "gentlemen's gentlemen" of the younger branches. The sleek pursy gravity of the one answers to the stately air of some of their quondam masters; and the flippancy and finery of our oldfashioned beaux, having been discarded by the heirs to the title and estate, have been retained by their lackeys. The late Admiral Byron (I have heard Northcote say) had a butler, or steward, who, from constantly observing his master, had so learned to mimic him-the look, the manner, the voice, the bow were so alike he was so "subdued to the very quality of his lord"-that it was difficult to distinguish them apart. Our modern footmen, as we see them fluttering and lounging in lobbies or at the doors of ladies' carriages, bedizened in lace and powder, with ivory