gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell you
no fibs, my little man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God, and
not the priest; and, as you talk with him, you will be surprised
more and more at his knowledge, his sense, his humour, his
courtesy; and you will find out--unless you have found it out
before--that a man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough
gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms
in London.

No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover. It was
such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick; Bewick, who was born
and bred upon them. A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on
from broad pool to broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool,
over great fields of shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low
cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair parks, and a
great house of gray stone, and brown moors above, and here and
there against the sky the smoking chimney of a colliery. You must
look at Bewick to see just what it was like, for he has drawn it a
hundred times with the care and the love of a true north
countryman; and, even if you do not care about the salmon river,
you ought, like all good boys, to know your Bewick.

At least, so old Sir John used to say, and very sensibly he put it
too, as he was wont to do:

"If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in France, I
hear, they say of him, 'Il sait son Rabelais.' But if I want to
describe one in England, I say, 'He knows his Bewick.' And I think
that is the higher compliment."