THE TEST OF A GENTLEMAN.
[To TEE EDITOR OP THE SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—Just now it seems that through the help of one or two articles in the Spectator itself, a few lines from the pen of "J. M. F.," no less than through correspondence akin to both, we have exchanged the grit of the highway of precedence amongst our fellows and the din of endless discussion for the quiet of a vestibule (our feet unshod the while) which should lead us to the shrine where all that we can hope for to further our own and our children's education stands waiting for us. Chaucer—I think at the page whereon he extols the daisy— refers to our Lord as " the first stock-father of all gentlemen," and we have seen that the age of Elizabeth did not discard the term. An experience of childhood occurs to me, and I ask your permission to record it. It is more than fifty-five years since I was told to look at a wood-engraving of Holbein's portrait of John Wet, and I seem to hear again the words that came with the showing of the picture. " When," said my grandfather, "this greatest of all our school teachers was opening St. Paul's School, which he had founded, he said to the assembled scholars, whom he had undertaken to control,
something like this You must now and then lift up your little white bands in prayer for me ; and as to our code of manners, children, we have always the example to follow of the orderly and sweet-considerate Christ.' "—I am, Sir, Ste., M. It. S.
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