iness and
with all the upper classes wiped out. It will be much nearer the truth
if he considers the people as a whole to be class for class just like
the English people, subject to the accident that there are no titles,
but with the difference that all classes, including the untitled Dukes
and Marquises and Earls, take to business as to their natural element.
The parallel may not be perfect; but it is incomparably more nearly
exact than the alternative and general impression.

It is of course necessary to recognise how rapidly the constitution of
English society is changing, how old traditions are dying out, and in
accordance with the Anglo-Saxon instinct the social scheme is tending
to assimilate itself to the American model. The facts in outline are
almost too familiar to be worth mentioning, except perhaps for the
benefit of some American readers, for Americans in England are
continually puzzled by anomalies which they see in English society. In
my childhood I was taught that no gentleman could buy or sell anything
for profit and preserve either his self-respect or the respect of his
fellows. The only conceivable exceptions--and I think I was not informed
of them at too early an age--were that a gentleman might deal in horses
or in wines and still remain, if somewhat shaded, a gentleman; the
reason being that a knowledge of either horses or wines was a
gentlemanly accomplishment. The indulgence extended to the vendor of
wines did not extend to the maker or seller of beer. I remember the
resentment of the school when the sons of a certain wealthy brewer were
admitted; and those boys had, I imagine, a cheerless time of it in their
schooldays. The eldest of those boys, being now the head of the family,
is to-day a peer. But at that time, though brewers or brewers' sons
might be admitted grudgingly to the company of gentlemen, they were not
gentlemen themselves. An aunt or a cousin who married a manufacturer, a
merchant, or a broker--no matter how rich or in how large a way of
business--was coldly regarded, if not actually cut, by the rest of the
family. There are many families--though hardly now a class--in which the
same traditions persist, but even the families in which the horror of
trade is as great as ever make an exception as a rule in favour of trade
conducted in the United States. The American may be pardoned for being
bewildered when in an aristocracy which is forbidden, so he is told, to
make money in trade,