experience. He manifests even less prudence in the conduct of these
speculations than in the cultivation of his ancestral acres, and the
inevitable result ensues that an ever-increasing debt at length
necessitates the sale of his estate. Such estates are ever more and more
frequently becoming the property of the merchant or manufacturer from
the town, or perhaps of the neighboring proprietor of the same inferior
rank, who has lately settled in the country, and become entitled to the
exercise of equal rights with the hereditary owner. There is no
essential difference in social culture between the two classes, but
there is a mighty difference between the habits of their lives. The
mercantile class of citizens is in Germany more refined than in any
other country, and has more political ambition than the corresponding
class in England has yet exhibited. The families of public functionaries
constitute the other half of the cultivated citizen class; and as the
former have the superiority in point of wealth, so these bear the palm
in respect of intellectual culture and administrative talent. Almost all
authors, since the days of Luther, have belonged to this class. In
school and college learning, in information, and in the conduct of
public affairs, the citizen is thus, for the most part, as far superior
to the nobleman as in fashionable manners the latter is to him. The
whole nation, however, enjoys alike the advantage of military education,
and every man may become an officer who passes the necessary
examination. Thus, in the manufacturing towns, the citizens occupy the
highest place, and the nobility in the garrison towns and those of royal
residence. This fact, however, must not be lost sight of--that Berlin,
the most populous city of Germany, has also gradually become the chief
and the richest commercial one, while the great fortress of Magdeburg
has also been becoming the seat of a wealthy and cultivated mercantile
community.

Instead of desiring landed property, and perhaps a patent of nobility
for his children, and an alliance with some noble country family, the
rich citizen rather sticks to his business, and prefers a young man in
his own rank, or perhaps a clergyman, or professor, or some municipal
officer as a suitor to his daughter, to the elegant officer or man of
noble blood; for the richest and most refined citizen, though the wife
or daughter of a noble official, is not entitled to appear at court with
her hus