making the acres more in number, the other by the plough making the same acres more in value.

Solomon saith, the king himself is maintained by husbandry. Pythis, a king, having discovered rich mines in his kingdom, employed all his people in digging of them, whence tilling was wholly neglected, insomuch as a great famine ensued. His queen, sensible of the calamities of the country, invited the king, her husband, to dinner, as he came hungry from overseeing his workmen in the mines. She contrived it, that the bread and meat were most artificially made of gold, and the king was much delighted with the conceit thereof, till at last he called for real meat to satisfy his hunger. Nay,” said the queen, "if you employ all your subjects in your mines, you must expect to feed upon gold, for nothing else can your kingdom afford.”

66

In time of famine he is the Joseph of his country, and keeps the poor from starving. Then he tameth his stacks of corn, which not his covetousness, but providence hath received for time of need, and to his poor neighbours abateth somewhat of the high price of the market.

The neighbour gentry court him for his acquaintance, which either he modestly waiveth or thankfully receiveth, but no way greedily desireth. He insults not on the ruins of a decayed gentleman, but pities and relieves him; and as he is called a good man, he desires to answer to the name, and to be so indeed.

In war, though he serveth on foot, he is ever mounted on a high spirit, as being a slave to none, and subject only to his own prince. Innocence and independence make a brave spirit, whereas otherwise one must ask his leave to be valiant on whom he depends. Therefore, if a state run up all to noblemen and gentlemen, so that the husbandmen be only mere labourers or cottagers, which one calls but housed beggars, it may have good cavalry, but never good bands of foot; so that their armies will be like those birds called apodes, without feet, always flying on their wings of horse. Wherefore, to make good infantry, it requireth men bred, not in a servile or

indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner. Wisely, therefore, did that knowing prince, king Henry VII., provide laws for the increase of his yeomanry, that his kingdom should not be like to coppice-woods, where the straddles being left too thick, all run to bushes and briers, and there is little clean underwood. For, enacting that houses used to husbandry should be kept up with a competent proportion of land, he did secretly sow hydra's teeth, whereupon, according to the poet's fiction, should rise up armed men for the service of the kingdom.

THE TRUE GENTLEMAN.

He is extracted from ancient and worshipful parentage. Where a pepin (pippin) is planted on a pepin stock, the fruit growing thence is called a renate* (rennet), a most delicious fruit, as both by sire and dam well descended. Thus his blood must need be well purified who is genteelly born on both sides. If his birth be not, at least his qualities are generous. What if he cannot, with the Hevenninghams of Suffolk, count five and twenty knights of his family, or tell sixteen knights successively with the Tilneys of Norfolk, or with the Nauntons show where their ancestors had seven hundred pounds a year before the conquest; yet he hath endeavoured by his own deserts to ennoble him. Thus valour makes him son to Cæsar, learning makes him kinsman to Tully, and piety reports him nephew to godly Constantine. It graceth a gentleman of low descent and high desert, when he owns the meanness of his parentage. How ridiculous is it when many brag that their families are more ancient than the moon, which all know are later than the star which some seventy years since shined in Cassiopeia.

He is not in his youth possessed with the great hopes of possessions. No flatterer reads constantly in his years a survey of the lands he is to inherit. This hath made many boys' thoughts swell so great they could never be

* Pepin is the name of a royal house in France, and re-natus means weil-born.

kept in compass afterwards. Only his parents acquaint him that he is the next undoubted heir to correction if misbehaving himself; and he finds no more favour from his schoolmaster, than his schoolmaster finds diligence in him, whose rod respects persons no more than bullets are partial in a battle.

At the university he is so studious, as if he intended learning for his profession. He knows well that cunning is no burden to carry, as paying neither portage by land nor poundage by sea. Yea, though to have land be a good first, yet to have learning is the surest second, which may stand to it when the other may chance to be taken

away.

At the Inns of Court he applies himself to learn the law of the kingdom. Object not, why should a gentleman learn law, who if he needeth it may have it for his money, and if he hath never so much of his own, he must but give it away. For what a shame is it for a man of quality to be ignorant of Solon in our Athens, of Lycurgus in our Sparta. Besides, law will help him to keep his own and bestead his neighbours. Say not that there be enough which make this their set practice; for so there are also many masters of defence by their profession, and shall private men therefore learn no skill at their weapons?

He is courteous and affable to his neighbours. As the sword of the best tempered metal is the most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behaviour to their inferiors.

He delights to see himself and his servants well mounted, therefore he loveth good horsemanship. Let never any foreign Rabshakeh send that brave to our Jerusalem, offering to lend her two thousand horses, if she be able on her part to set riders upon them. We know how Darius got the Persian empire from the rest of his fellow peers by the neighing of his generous steed. It were no harm if in some needless suits of intricate precedency betwixt equal gentlemen, the priority were adjudged to him who keeps a stable of most serviceable

horses. He furnisheth and prepareth himself in peace against time of war, lest it be too late to learn when his skill is to be used. He approves himself courageous when brought to the trial, as well remembering the custom which is used at the creation of knights of the Bath, wherein the knights' master-cook cometh forth, and presenteth his great knife to the new made knights, admonishing them to be faithful and valiant, otherwise he threatens them that that very knife is prepared to cut off their spurs.

If the Commission of the Peace finds him out, he faithfully discharges it. I say, finds him out; for a public office is a guest which receives the best usage from those who never invited it. And though he declined the place, the country knows to prize his worth who would be ignorant of his own. He compounds many petty differences between his neighbours, which are easier ended in his porch than in Westminster. Hall; for many persons think, if once they have fetched a warrant from a justice, they have given earnest to follow the suit, though otherwise the matter be so mean that the next night's sleep would have bound both parties to the peace, and made them as good friends as before.

Yet he connives not at the smothering of punishable. faults. He hates that practice, as common as dangerous amongst country people, who having received again the goods which were stolen from them, partly out of foolish pity, and partly out of covetousness to save charges in prosecuting the law, let the thief escape unpunished. Thus, whilst private losses are repaired, the wounds to the commonwealth in the breach of the laws are left uncured; and thus petty larceners are encouraged into felons, and afterwards are hanged for pounds, because never whipped for pence, who, if they had felt the cord, had never been brought to the halter.

If chosen a member of Parliament he is willing to do his country service. If he be no rhetorician to raise affections, yea, Mercury was a greater speaker than Jupiter himself, he counts it great wisdom to be the good manager

of yea and nay. The slow pace of his judgment is recompensed by the swift following of his affections when his judgment is once soundly informed. And here we

leave him in consultation, wishing him, with all the rest of his honourable society, all happy success.

IZAAK WALTON.

IZAAK WALTON, born A.D. 1593, made a "moderate competency" in the business of a linen-draper in London, from which he retired in 1643, and afterwards wrote lives of Dr. Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, George Herbert, Hooker, Sanderson, and the Complete Angler.

MR. GEORGE HERBERT.

THE third day after he was made rector of Bemerton, and had changed his sword and silk clothes for a canonical coat, he returned, so habited, with his friend Mr. Woodnot to Bainton; and immediately after he had seen and saluted his wife, he said to her, "You are now a minister's wife, and must now so far forget your father's house, as not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners; for you are to know that a priest's wife can challenge no place, but that which she purchaseth by humility, and I am sure places so purchased do best become them. And let me tell you that I am so good a herald, as to assure you that this is truth."

And she was so meek a wife as to assure him it was no vexing news to her, and that he should see her observe it with a cheerful willingness. And indeed her unforced humility, a humility that in her was so original as to be born with her, made her happy as to do so; and her doing so begat her an unfeigned love, and a serviceable respect from all that conversed with her; and this love followed her in all places as inseparably as shadows follow substances in summer.

It was not many days before Mr. Herbert returned