ignorantly despises. In the early middle ages he did not even condescend
to read and write, those inferior accomplishments being badges of
serfdom. If you look close at the "occupations of a gentleman" in the
present day, you will find they are all of purely barbaric character.
They descend to us direct from the semi-savage invaders who overthrew
the structure of the Roman empire, and replaced its civilised
organisation by the military and barbaric system of feudalism. The
"gentleman" is above all things a fighter, a hunter, a fisher--he
preserves the three simplest and commonest barbaric functions. He is
_not_ a practiser of any civilised or civilising art--a craftsman, a
maker, a worker in metal, in stone, in textile fabrics, in pottery.
These are the things that constitute civilisation; but the aristocrat
does none of them; in the famous words of one who now loves to mix with
English gentlemen, "he toils not, neither does he spin." The things he
_may_ do are, to fight by sea and land, like his ancestor the Goth and
his ancestor the Viking; to slay pheasant and partridge, like his
predatory forefathers; to fish for salmon in the Highlands; to hunt the
fox, to sail the yacht, to scour the earth in search of great
game--lions, elephants, buffalo. His one task is to kill--either his
kind or his quarry.

Observe, too, the essentially barbaric nature of the gentleman's
home--his trappings, his distinctive marks, his surroundings, his
titles. He lives by choice in the wildest country, like his skin-clad
ancestors, demanding only that there be game and foxes and fish for his
delectation. He loves the moors, the wolds, the fens, the braes, the
Highlands, not as the painter, the naturalist, or the searcher after
beauty of scenery loves them--for the sake of their wild life, their
heather and bracken, their fresh keen air, their boundless horizon--but
for the sake of the thoroughly barbarous existence he and his dogs and