ties of social order; and the social order is
the same everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta.
Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any given
space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes; there will
be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other ranks below them.
Equality may be a _right_, but no power on earth can convert it into
_fact_. It would be a good thing for France if this idea could be
popularized. The benefits of political harmony are obvious to the least
intelligent classes. Harmony is, as it were, the poetry of order, and
order is a matter of vital importance to the working population. And
what is order, reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement
of things among themselves--unity, in short? Architecture, music, and
poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any other
country, is based upon this principle; it is written upon the very
foundations of her clear accurate language, and a language must always
be the most infallible index of national character. In the same way
you may note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to
strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by
the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea
attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest
number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little
phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have
risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement.
No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of unity which should
permeate the life of an aristocracy; possibly no other nation has so
intelligent a comprehension of a political necessity; history will never
find her behind the time. France has been led astray many a time, but
she is deluded, woman-like, by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm
which at first outstrips sober reason.

So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the Faubourg
is the splendour of its great mansions, its great gardens, and a
surrounding quiet in keeping with princely revenues drawn from great
estates. And what is this distance set between a class and a whole
metropolis but visible and outward expression of the widely different
attitude of mind which must inevitably keep them apart? The position of
the head is well defined in every organism. If by any chance a nation
allows its