d’industrie, through all varieties of this category.  Most of these bear titles of baron, compte, &c.  Are they spurious titles?  Nobody knows.  Such is the obscurity and extent of an aristocracy multiplying their numbers in every generation, and resting upon no basis of property, that it is equally possible for the true “baron” to lie under suspicion as a pretender, and for the false one to prosper by imposture.  On the other hand, who could hope to pass himself off for six weeks as an English earl?  Yet it is evident, that where counterfeit claims are so easy, the intrusion of persons unqualified, or doubtfully qualified, must be so numerous and constant that long ago every pure standard of what is noble or gentlemanly, must have perished in so keen a struggle and so vast a mob.  Merely by its outrageous excess numerically, every continental “noblesse” is already lowered and vitiated in its tone.  For in vast bodies, fluctuating eternally, no unity of tone can be maintained, except exactly in those cases where some vulgar prejudice carries away all alike by its strength of current.

Such a current we have already noticed in the style of scenical effort manifested by most foreigners.  To be a “conteur,” to figure in “proverbs,” to attitudinize, to produce a “sensation”—­all these are purposes of ambition in foreign circles.  Such a current we have noticed in the general determination of the Continent towards French tastes; and that is a worse tendency even than it used to be, for the true aristocracy of France is gone for ever as it formerly existed in the haute noblesse; and the court of a democratic king is no more equal to the task of diffusing good manners, than that of the American or Haytian president.  Personally, the king and his family might be models of high breeding; but the insolence of democracy would refuse the example, and untrained vulgarity would fail even in trying to adopt it.

Besides these false impulses given to the continental tone of society, we have noticed a third, and that is the preposterous value given amongst foreigners to what is military.  This tendency is at once a cause of vulgarity and an exponent of vulgarity.  Thence comes the embroidery of collars, the betasseling, the befrogging, the flaunting attempts at “costuming.”  It is not that the military character is less fitted to a gentlemanly refinement than any other; but the truth is, that no professional character whatsoever, when pushed into exclusive esteem, can continue to sustain itself on the difficult eminence of pure natural high breeding.  All professions alike have their besetting vices, pedantries, and infirmities.  In some degree they correct each other when thrown together on terms of equality.  But on the Continent, the lawyer and the clergyman is every where degraded; the senator has usually no existence; and the authentic landed proprietor, liberated from all duties but the splendid and non-technical duties of patriotism, comes