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In England, the very reason why the aristocratic feeling makes itself so sensibly felt and so distinctly an object of notice to the censorious observer is, because it maintains a troubled existence amongst counter and adverse influences, so many and so potent. This might be illustrated abundantly. But, as respects the particular question before me, it will be sufficient to say this: With us the profession and exercise of knowledge, as a means of livelihood, is honorable; on the continent it is not so. The knowledge, for instance, which is embodied in the three learned professions, does, with us, lead to distinction and civil importance; no man can pretend to deny this; nor, by consequence, that the professors personally take rank with the highest order of gentlemen. Are they not, I demand, everywhere with us on the same footing, in point of rank and consideration, as those who bear the king’s commission in the army and navy? Can this be affirmed of the continent, either generally, or, indeed, partially? I say, no. Let us take Germany, as an illustration. Many towns (for anything I know, all) present us with a regular bisection of the resident notables, or wealthier class, into two distinct (often hostile) coteries: one being composed of those who are “noble;” the other, of families equally well educated and accomplished, but not, in the continental sense, “noble.” The meaning and value of the word is so entirely misapprehended by the best English writers, being, in fact, derived from our own way of applying it, that it becomes important to ascertain its true value. A “nobility,” which is numerous enough to fill a separate ball-room in every sixth-rate town, it needs no argument to show, cannot be a nobility in any English sense. In fact, an edelmann or nobleman, in the German sense, is strictly what we mean by a born gentleman; with this one only difference, that, whereas, with us, the rank which denominates a man such passes off by shades so insensible, and almost infinite, into the ranks below, that it becomes impossible to assign it any strict demarkation or lines of separation; on the contrary, the continental noble points to certain fixed barriers, in the shape of privileges, which divide him, per saltum, from those who are below his own order. But were it not for this one legal benefit of accurate circumscription and slight favor, the continental noble, whether Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince of Sicily and of Russia, is simply on a level with the common landed esquire of Britain, and not on a level in very numerous cases.

Such being the case, how paramount must be the spirit of aristocracy in continental society! Our haute noblesse–our genuine nobility, who are such in the general feeling of their compatriots–will do that which the phantom of nobility of the continent will not: the spurious nobles of Germany will not mix, on equal terms, with their untitled fellow-citizens, living in the same city and in the same style as themselves; they will not meet them in the same ball or concert- room. Our great territorial nobility, though sometimes forming exclusive circles (but not, however, upon any principle of high birth), do so daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same amusements of races, balls, musical assemblies, with the baronets (or elite of the gentry); with the landed esquires (or middle gentry); with the superior order of tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers, for political weight, or social consideration, but, with us, constitute the lower and broader stratum of the nobilitas,

[Footnote: It may be necessary to inform some readers that the word noble, by which so large a system of imposition and fraud, as to the composition of foreign society, has long been practised upon the credulity of the British, corresponds to our word gentlemanly (or, rather, to the vulgar word genteel, if that word were ever used legally, or extra gradum), not merely upon the argument of its virtual and operative value in the general estimate of men (that is, upon the argument that a count, baron, etc., does not, qua such, command any deeper feeling of respect or homage than a British esquire), but also upon the fact, that, originally, in all English registers, as, for instance, in the Oxford matriculation registers, all the upper gentry (knights, esquires, etc.) are technically designated by the word nobiles.–See Chambeilayuc, etc. ]