reggiasse nella cognizione delle arti e nella notizia
delle scienze e delle lingue," wherefore he called her boldly, in the
enthusiasm of his admiration, "_grande anfitrite, Diana nume della
terra!_"

LETTER II.

TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT.

The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy--The desire to draw a
line--Substitution of external limitations for realities--The high
life of nature--Value of gentlemen in a State--Odiousness of the
narrow class-spirit--Julian Fane--Perfect knighthood--Democracies
intolerant of dignity--Tendency of democracies to fix one uniform type
of manners--That type not a high one--A descriptive
anecdote--Knowledge and taste reveal themselves in manners--Dr. Arnold
on the absence of gentlemen in France and Italy--Absence of a class
with traditional good manners--Language defiled by the vulgarity of
popular taste--Influence of aristocratic opinion limited, that of
democratic opinion universal--Want of elevation in the French
_bourgeoisie_--Spirit of the provincial democracy--Spirit of the
Parisian democracy--Sentiments and acts of the Communards--Romantic
feeling towards the past--Hopes for liberal culture in the democratic
idea--Aristocracies think too much of persons and positions--That we
ought to forget persons and apply our minds to things, and phenomena,
and ideas.

All you say against the narrowness of the aristocratic spirit is true
and to the point; but I think that you and your party are apt to
confound together two states of feeling which are essentially distinct
from each other. There is an illiberal spirit of aristocracy, and there
is also a liberal one. The illiberal spirit does not desire to improve
itself, having a full and firm belief in its own absolute perfection;
its sole anxiety is to exclude others, to draw a circular line, the
smaller the better, provided always that it gets inside and can keep the
millions out. We see this spirit, not only in reference to birth, but in
even fuller activity with regard to education and employment--in the
preference for certain schools and colleges, for class reasons, without
regard to the quality of the teaching--in the contempt for all
professions but two or three, without regard to the inherent baseness or
nobility of the work that has to be done in them: so that the question
asked by persons of this temper is not whether a man has been well
trained in his youth, but if he has been to Eton and Oxf