ds,
the millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair
of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable
human element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration
without falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and,
fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent
class, unless some special means are taken to arrest the process of
disintegration in the third generation. This is so rarely done, at least
successfully, that one need not live a very long life to see most of
the rich families he knew in childhood more or less reduced, and the
millions shifted into the hands of the country-boys who were sweeping
stores and carrying parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving
their chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing-dishes,
drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers, wearing their hair in
powder, and casing their legs in long boots with silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call
it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown
to be a caste,--not in any odious sense;--but, by the repetition of the
same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct
organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity,
and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the
good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all
we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our
colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two
different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme
cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure
is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless
attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or
at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic,
even if bright,--the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of
the limbs,--the voice is unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words
were coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the
other aspect is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be
pallid,--his features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye
is bright and quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a
pianist's fingers dance over their music, and his whole air, though
it