Having thus explained our use of the word "foreign," we put it to any considerate man, how it should have been possible that any select tone of society could grow up amongst a body so comprehensive and so miscellaneous as the _soi-disant_ nobility of continental states? Could it be expected that 130,000 French "nobles" of 1788, needy and squalid in their habits as many of them were, should be high-bred gentlemen? In Germany, we know that all the watering-places are infested with black-leg gamblers, fortune-hunters, _chevaliers d'industrie_, through all varieties of this category. Most of these bear titles of baron, compte, &c. Are they spurious titles? Nobody knows. Such is the obscurity and extent of an aristocracy multiplying their numbers in every generation, and resting upon no basis of property, that it is equally possible for the true "baron" to lie under suspicion as a pretender, and for the false one to prosper by imposture. On the other hand, who could hope to pass himself off for six weeks as an English earl? Yet it is evident, that where counterfeit claims are so easy, the intrusion of persons unqualified, or doubtfully qualified, must be so numerous and constant that long ago every pure standard of what is noble or gentlemanly, must have perished in so keen a struggle and so vast a mob. Merely by its outrageous excess numerically, every continental "noblesse" is already lowered and vitiated in its tone. For in vast bodies, fluctuating eternally, no unity of tone can be maintained, except exactly in those cases where some vulgar prejudice carries away all alike by its strength of current. Such a current we have already noticed in the style of scenical effort manifested by most foreigners. To be a "conteur," to figure in "proverbs," to attitudinize, to produce a "sensation"--all these are purposes of ambition in foreign circles. Such a current we have noticed in the general determination of the Continent towards French tastes; and _that_ is a worse tendency even than it used to be, for the true aristocracy of France is gone for ever as it formerly existed in the _haute noblesse_; and the court of a democratic king is no more equal to the task of diffusing good manners, than that of the American or Haytian president. Personally, the king and his family might be models of high breeding; but the insolence of democracy would refuse the example, and untrained vulgarity would fail even in trying to adopt it.