as General of Horse; and here, at the battle of Zutphen, when only thirty-two, he fell, mortally wounded.

For so brief a career, one externally more brilliant was never run by a candidate for fame. When in years not much more than a boy, he had given evidence of the thoughtfulness and address of a statesman; his writings prove him to have been not only a scholar of rare and varied culture, but a poet of genius; and the field of Zutphen showed the budding of a brilliant military renown. At his death, lamentation went up over Europe, as for the loss of one who was among the leaders and ornaments of the world.

The accomplishments and acquirements of Sidney, his manners and conversation, his genius and his personal beauty, are still not sufficient to account for the universal fascination, as well of the purest as of the most accomplished, and for the general so cordial grief at his death. To justify the love and the homage he inspired, he must have been even richer in qualities of heart than in intellectual powers and attainments, richer in graces than in gifts. And that he was so, his last act on the day he received his death-wound testifies, revealing the deep beauty of his nature, and throwing round his whole being a saintly halo. And that renowned act was worthily ushered in by another, which represents the buoyant pulse and generous courage of youthful life, as the final one does the holy loveliness of self-denial while life was fast ebbing. For, as he came upon the field, seeing the veteran Lord Marshal, Sir William Pelham, lightly armed, with a chivalrous shame that he, a young knight, should be so much better protected, he threw off his cuishes; and it was to this, what we may term, generous deference to age, and noble self-regardlessness, that he owed his wound; for, fighting with a gallantry that drew plaudits from the foe, he was hit in the thigh by a musket-ball. As he was borne from the field, he asked for water, to quench the raging thirst caused by such a wound; but, as he lifted the cup to his lips, observing by the road-side a dying soldier, who threw up at it a ghastly,

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wishful look, he handed the cup back to his attendant to give it to the soldier, saying, "This man's necessity is even greater than mine."

These two renowned knights illuminate history, as the representatives of gentlemanhood, -the most approved gentlemen of Christendom; and that high station they hold, through strength and purity of soul and gentleness of bearing. Only from an ever-lively, inward fount of generous ascendant feeling could have flowed in both such simple grandeur of conduct married to such radiance of demeanor.

The power that raised them to preeminence, that gave a daily beauty to their lives, a beauty that made itself felt, was, and could be nought other than unselfishness. In both there was an active, despotic selfforgetfulness. In them so large and manly was the soul, that it gave to their keen energies a beneficent drift. Without effort, almost without purpose, they were generous, compassionate, magnanimous, true, and outwardly affable. Such high qualities, so richly mingled, imply obliteration of the me, and import that clear moral freedom whose robust atmosphere is the very breath of the highest type of gentlemanhood, - a freedom which, imparting spiritual self-possession, imparts a force greater even than virtuous self-control; for this constrains and sometimes stiffens, while that, conferring easy, buoyant dominion, holds the whole being so in poise that all acts have the grace and dignity of unconscious excellence, a high-born excellence that cannot be counterfeited, and must issue from a deep, central motion, which has an impetus as resistless as that of the subterranean feeders of a copious, transparent spring.

Such men justify, while they illustrate, ideal embodiments. Had they and the like of them never lived, the narrative that is now a veracious biography would to most men seem an unnatural fiction. They are mirrors of humanity, which show man, not as he is daily encountered, but magnified, beautified, transfigured. And yet, being flesh-and-blood mortals, they are practical exemplars, breathing proofs, of what moral and mannerly heights men can attain to.

It may seem that I am overstating the moral element, and that the gentleman is rather an æsthetic than an ethic personage. It is this moral element which, in my conception of the gentleman, is pivotal. Dealing now with the highest type, I conceive, that in that type not only are morals primary, but that manners result from them; so that, where there is not a solid substratum of pure, elevated feeling, there will not, there cannot be a clean, high, unaffected demeanor. Had Bayard, with the fifteen thousand captured ducats, bought for himself a chateau and estate, reserving the ransom offered by the Brescian matron as a wherewith to furnish it, Fame would not have blazoned to the latest time a French soldier with the unique eulogium, - "The Good Knight, without fear and without reproach." The heart that was so large and gracious as to command his acts of sublime disinterestedness, shaped, with its profuse, inexhaustible warmth, his outward bearing into kindliness and sympathetic tenderness, as surely as the healthful play of.. sound, internal organs sends to the skin and to