What is a Gentleman?

New Zealand Mail, Issue 866, 5 October 1888, Page 4

What is a Gentleman?

The word itself is, without doubt, derived from the French gentilhomme, a man of birth or extraction from a noble family. One of our old English writers (Seldon) says it was introduced by the Normans, and moat likely it was. But the Frenoh word itself, where did that come from? Doubtless it had its origin in the Latin adjective gentilis, belong, ing to a family. The French gentilhomme and the English gentleman were then only applied to those who boasted ancestral honours. But this signification soon gave way, and the term was applied to those wb.o had the manners of the great—those courtesies which the well-born learned and practised. Hence to be a gentleman and to be courteous became one and the same thing. A churl, on the other hand, was applied to men of an ungracious turn, and Dame Juliana Berners, reflecting on the Scriptural chronology of Cain and Seth, says : ‘ Cain became a churl through the curse of God, and Seth a gentleman by his father’s and mother’s blessing.’ Bernard Gilpin, preaching before Edward IV., said: ‘The mean men murmur and grudge, and say the gentlemen have all, and there never was so many gentlemen and so'little gentleness. We commonly use the term gentleman in two senses ; first, as applied to persons of rank ; second, to those V.of refined and elegant manners. To the latter wo may all attain, if we resolve on doing so.