GENTLEMAN

From Agepedia

GENTLEMAN. In the modern languages of western Europe, we generally find a word to signify a person distinguished by his standing from the laboring classes, as gentiluomo, gentilhomme, hidalgo, &c. In the German language, the term which most nearly expresses the same idea, is gebildet, which includes not only gentlemanly manners, but also a cultivated mind. The English lawbooks say, that, under the denomination of gentlemen, are comprised all above yeomen; so that noblemen are truly called gentlemen; and further, that a gentleman, in England, is generally defined to be one, who, without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen: the coat determines whether he is or is not descended from others of the same name. In Blackstone's table of the rules of precedence in England, we find, after the nobility and certain official dignities, that doctors, esquires, gentlemen, yeomen, tradesmen, artificers, laborers, take rank in the order in which we have named them. But the word corresponding to gentleman, has in no language received so much of a moral signification as in England. The reason of this seems to us to be, that aristocracy has no where taken the lead, in all matters of life, so much as in England, and that, therefore, the word gentleman, meaning, originally, a man of gentle, that is, noble blood, soon came to signify a man that does what is proper, becoming, and behaves like a person of the higher, viz., well bred classes. Gentleman, in its highest sense, signifies a person who not only does what is right and just, but whose conduct is guided by a true principle of honor, that honor which does not consist in observing fashionable punctilios, but springs from that selfrespect and intellectual refinement which manifest themselves in easy and free, yet delicate manners. To be truly a gentleman in feeling and manners, is an object of great importance; and many well meaning persons, in the education of the young, forgo to awaken early enough the sense or I.'nor and self respect, which is one of the best guards against all meanness of conduct. Gentleman, in the United States, is a word of a very comprehensive character. The anecdote related of the duke of SaxeWeimar, during his travels in this country, that a stagecoachman came to his inn, and asked him, " Are you the man who goes in the stage ? I am the gentleman mat's to drive you," is a good caricature of the wholesale application of the word among us.