u would scarcely
expect to meet with it. One little descriptive anecdote will illustrate
what I mean. Having been invited to a stag-hunt in the Cote d'Or, I sat
down to _dejeuner_ with the sportsmen in a good country-house or chateau
(it was an old place with four towers), and in the midst of the meal in
came a man smoking a cigar. After a bow to the ladies he declined to eat
anything, and took a chair a little apart, but just opposite me. He
resumed his hat and went on smoking with a _sans-gene_ that rather
surprised me under the circumstances. He put one arm on the side-board:
the hand hung down, and I perceived that it was dirty (so was the
shirt), and that the nails had edges of ebony. On his chin there was a
black stubble of two days' growth. He talked very loudly, and his dress
and manners were exactly those of a bagman just arrived at his inn. Who
and what could the man be? I learned afterwards that he had begun life
as a distinguished pupil of the _Ecole Polytechnique_, that since then
he had distinguished himself as an officer of artillery and had won the
Legion of Honor on the field of battle, that he belonged to one of the
principal families in the neighborhood, and had nearly 2000_l._ a year
from landed property.

Now, it may be a good thing for the roughs at the bottom of the social
scale to level up to the bagman-ideal, but it does seem rather a pity
(does it not?) that a born gentleman of more than common bravery and
ability should level _down_ to it. And it is here that lies the
principle objection to democracy from the point of view of culture, that
its notion of life and manners is a uniform notion, not admitting much
variety of classes, and not allowing the high development of graceful
and accomplished humanity in any class which an aristocracy does at
least encourage in one class, though it may be numerically a small
class. I have not forgotten what Saint-Simon and La Bruyere have
testified about the ignorance of the old noblesse. Saint-Simon said that
they were fit for nothing but fighting, and only qualified for promotion
even in the army by seniority; that the rest of their time was passed
in "the most deadly uselessness, the consequence of their indolence and
distaste for all instruction." I am sure that my modern artillery
captain, notwithstanding his bad manners, _knew_ more than any of his
forefathers; but where was his "perfect knighthood?" And we easily
forget "how much talent runs into mann