Readings in English Prose; Selected from the Best Writers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 Excerpt: ...is equally true that this very mysterious, indescribable, indefinite personage, is even now partially comprehended on the Continent, though an indigenous name has not been applied to him. We hear the word, gentleman" used in Paris or Vienna sometimes; for the repetition of the word by English travellers has familiarised the term, though the lively Frenchman or sober German has an idea of its meaning yet more vague than we have ourselves. When we meet a person of decent appearance whose name or calling we are unacquainted with, we say we met a gentleman at so and so. Here the word is used in a sense different altogether from that in which we have hitherto considered it; it now expresses merely that we met a man, whom, in courteous phrase, we call a gentleman, ') The woolsack is the name of the Lord Cliancellor's seat, as speaker of the House of Lords. ") Ad infinitum, without end. from the poverty of our language, without meaning or conveying any idea that he is in fact a gentleman in the extended signification. It is merely a denomination of common parlance, in which no opinion is included either of the station or qualifications of the individual. In this way it is applied to all whose coats are not absolutely threadbare or out at the elbows. In this particular sense, the word is accurately expressed by the, Monsieur" of the French, the, Signore" of the Italians, and the, Herr" of the Germans. In the United States of America, where all our conventional phrases are in vogue, this word, gentleman" is in much more confined use. We find it there generally substituted by the simple expression, man." Nothing, perhaps, annoys an Englishman so much in America as hearing himself perpetually called, man." The waite...