in which the individual fears nothing so
much as to lose his dignity, in which it is preached from the pulpit,
that noisy, worldly amusements are sinful, and the learned men of the
city find no adequate reason for such disturbance in the streets.

The gentry of the city are separated from the citizens by dress and
titles. As much as the nobles look down upon them, so do they upon the
citizens, and these again upon the peasants. A merchant has already a
place among the gentry, especially if he occupies some city office or
has wealth. In the families also of merchants of distinction, as the
first wholesale houses are denominated, and in those of traders of
consideration, as the possessors of large retail shops are called, a
pleasing change may be observed in the mode of life. The coarse luxury
of a former generation is restrained, better training at home and
greater rectitude in business are everywhere perceptible. It is already
a subject of boast that the members of old solid commercial houses are
not those who sue for patents of nobility; nay, such vain new nobles
are despised by the high commercial class.[85] And the unprejudiced
cavalier is brought to confess, that in fact there is no difference
between the wife of the landed proprietor, who goes with dignity into
the cow-house to overlook the skimming of the cream, and the wife of a
merchant of distinction at Frankfort, who during the fair sits in the
warehouse; "she is well and handsomely dressed, she gives orders to her
people like a princess, she knows how to behave to people of rank,
commoners, and those of the lower classes, each according to their
class and position; she reads and understands many languages, she
judges sensibly, and knows how to live, and bring up her children
well." Other circumstances, besides the intellectual energy of the
time, contributed to elevate the German merchant. The influx of the
expelled Huguenots had not in some respects been favourable to our
German character, yet the influence that they exercised on German
commerce must be highly estimated. About 1750 their families dwelt in
almost all the larger commercial cities; they formed there a small
aristocratic community, lived in social seclusion, and maintained
carefully their relations with their connections in France, who, up to
the present day, form an aristocracy of French wholesale traders,
serious and strict, and rather of the old-fashioned aristocratic
school. It was among the