ty is
little disturbed on their account.

Although all within the doors of a French _salon_ are not perfectly
equal, none are made unpleasantly to feel the indifference. I dare say
there are circles in Paris, in which the mere possession of money may be
a source of evident distinction, but it must be in a very inferior set.
The French, while they are singularly alive to the advantages of money,
and extremely liable to yield to its influence in all important matters,
rarely permit any manifestations of its power to escape them in their
ordinary intercourse. As a people, they appear to me to be ready to
yield everything to money but its external homage. On these points they
are the very converse of the Americans, who are hard to be bought, while
they consider money the very base of all distinction. The origin of
these peculiarities may be found in the respective conditions of the two
countries.

In America, fortunes are easily and rapidly acquired; pressure reduces
few to want; he who serves is, if anything, more in demand than he who
is to be served; and the want of temptation produces exemption from the
liability to corruption. Men will, and do, daily _corrupt themselves_ in
the rapacious pursuit of gain, but comparatively few are in the market
to be bought and sold by others. Notwithstanding this, money being every
man's goal, there is a secret, profound, and general deference for it,
while money will do less than in almost any other country in
Christendom. Here, few young men look forward to gaining distinction by
making money; they search for it as a means, whereas with us it is the
end. We have little need of arms in America, and the profession is in
less request than that of law or merchandize. Of the arts and letters
the country possesses none, or next to none; and there is no true
sympathy with either. The only career that is felt as likely to lead,
and which can lead, to distinction independently of money, is that of
politics, and, as a whole, this is so much occupied by sheer
adventurers, with little or no pretentions to the name of statesmen,
that it is scarcely reputable to belong to it. Although money has no
influence in politics, or as little as well may be, even the successful
politician is but a secondary man in ordinary society in comparison with
the _millionnaire_. Now all this is very much reversed in Paris: money
does much, while it seems to do but little. The writer of a successful
comedy would be