e of ability and character, without the
external buttresses of primogeniture and entail, may safely measure
itself against the stained lineage of many European families of high
title. The very absence of titular distinction often causes the lines
to be more clearly drawn; as Mr. Charles Dudley Warner says: "Popular
commingling in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic
countries, but it will not answer in a republic." There is, however,
no universal theory that holds good from New York to California; and
hence the generalising foreigner is apt to see nothing but practical
as well as theoretical equality.

In spite of anything in the foregoing that may seem incompatible, the
fact remains that the distinguishing feature of American society, as
contrasted with the societies of Europe, is the greater approach to
equality that it has made. It is in this sphere, and not in those of
industry, law, or politics, that the British observer must feel that
the American breathes a distinctly more liberal and democratic air
than he. The processes of endosmose and exosmose go on under much
freer conditions; the individual particle is much more ready to
filtrate up or down to its proper level. Mr. W.D. Howells writes that
"once good society contained only persons of noble or gentle birth;
then persons of genteel or sacred callings were admitted; now it
welcomes to its level everyone of agreeable manners or cultivated
mind;" and this, which may be true of modern society in general, is
infinitely more true in America than elsewhere. It might almost be
asserted that everyone in America ultimately finds his proper social
niche; that while many are excluded from the circles for which they
_think_ themselves adapted, practically none are shut off from their
really harmonious _milieu_. The process of segregation is deprived to
a large extent of the disagreeableness consequent upon a rigid table
of precedence. Nothing surprises an American more in London society
than the uneasy sense of inferiority that many a distinguished man of
letters will show in the presence of a noble lord. No amount of
philosophy enables one to rise entirely superior to the trammels of
early training and hoary association. Even when the great novelist
feels himself as at least on a level with his ducal interlocutor, he
cannot ignore the fact that his fellow-guests do not share his
opinion. Now, without going the length of asserting that there is
absolutely noth