s is especially likely to be the case when means of
various and tempting pleasures are put within the reach of the upper
classes by advanced conditions of national commerce and knowledge: and
it is _certain_ to be the case as soon as position among those upper
classes becomes any way purchasable with money, instead of being the
assured measure of some kind of worth, (either strength of hand, or
true wisdom of conduct, or imaginative gift). It has been becoming
more and more the condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since
the fifteenth century; and is gradually bringing about its ruin, and
in that ruin, checked only by the power which here and there a good
soldier or true statesman achieves over the putrid chaos of its vain
policy, the ruin of all beneath it; which can be arrested only, either
by the repentance of that old aristocracy, (hardly to be hoped,) or by
the stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier than it.

141. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I would at this
moment, if I could, fasten every one of its institutions down with
bands of iron, and trust for all progress and help against its tyranny
simply to the patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had
to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old Austria
triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to the chance (or
rather the distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor born
to its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and act, run the
most distant risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany and
England become like the thoughts of the people of America.

My American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge,
is the dearest I have in the world, tell me I know nothing about
America. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe that
I, therefore, usually _say_ nothing about America. But this much I
have said, because the Americans, as a nation, set their trust in
liberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the
possibility of the other; and because, also, as a nation, they are
wholly undesirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irreverent of
themselves, both in the present and in the future; discontented with
what they are, yet having no ideal of anything which they desire to
become.[A]

[A] Some following passages in this letter, containing
personal references which might, in permanence, have given
pain or offense, are now omitte