"A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT." 433 



sands as much below respectability as my friend held 

 himself above it. 



This makes the gentleman-jock want to be a 

 gentleman, and creates a wrangle if refused to ride 

 as such. I think I need scarcely trouble my readers 

 by a description of the yeoman : by the term yeoman 

 we generally mean to imply that most respectable 

 set of men called, in other terms, gentle men -farmers. 

 Here, again, the term is inappropriate, for it leads 

 to misconstruction. Why, in the name of common 

 sense, is the term Gentleman to be tacked on ? We 

 never hear of a gentleman-merchant. If the term gen- 

 tleman-farmer means to imply a man who farms his 

 own land, or a part of it, then the owner of a two- 

 acre field is a gentleman-farmer, and so is the Duke of 

 Bedford : we might as well style him and others noble- 

 m?z-farmers to describe them. They are noblemen 

 who choose to farm their own land, but it would be 

 ludicrous to style them noble or noblemen-farmers. 

 The gentleman of large landed estates who keeps all 

 or a portion in his own hands, is a gentleman who 

 farms those lands ; but we should not call the late 

 Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, merely a gentleman-farmer ; he 

 is, or was, a gentleman the farmer need not be added : 

 nor to a common farmer, because he happens to own 

 the land, or a part of the land, he cultivates, can we 

 appropriately add the term gentleman : he is & farmer, 

 and no more. Why can he not be content with so 

 respectable a denomination, without aiming at a title 

 to which he has no pretensions, and in doing which he 

 most probably renders himself ridiculous, and chal- 

 lenges his own mortification ? The gentleman is a 

 gentleman, whether he farms or not ; the others are 

 large or small farmers, and not gentlemen. 



VOL. I. F F 



