Now, with regard to the professional and trading classes I should say that they are nearer to one another in France than in England. The old division of _Noblesse_, _Bourgeoisie_, _Peuple_, is still in constant use, and is extremely convenient as a general division of French classes. The _noblesse_, true or false, lives on its means, and has generally landed property; the _bourgeoisie_ lives in more or less comfort, either on private means or on the gains of professions and trades; the _peuple_ lives by manual labour and on wages. An artist, a solicitor, a doctor, belong to the _bourgeoisie_, and they are all three nearer to the shopkeepers and more familiar and friendly with them than are men who belong to the liberal professions in England. [Sidenote: Gentlemen.] A distinction of the greatest importance between England and France is indicated by the untranslatableness of the word “gentleman.” The English reader knows what the word means. It is the sign of an ideal which may constitute caste or something else, for it often traverses caste. You frequently, in England, meet with men who are not of high birth, who are not very rich, yet whom all recognise as gentlemen, and this simple recognition places them on an equality, of a certain kind, with people of higher rank. In France, this peculiar kind of equality is unknown. The _bourgeois_ is never the equal of the noble, though he may be the better gentleman of the two. It is undeniable that, in this peculiar sense, English society is more _égalitaire_ than French. [Sidenote: The Teaching Class in France.] [Sidenote: Severance between Fashionable and Educated Classes.] The teaching classes are in some respects a lower caste in France than in England. This difference may be in part due to the clerical character of English education, which gave a dignity and almost a sacred character to schoolmasters. In France the numerous professors in the University are not well paid, and often eke out a slender income by private lessons. Many of them are cultivated gentlemen, others are much less refined, as may be expected in a very mixed class, and an old principal tells me that the body as a whole has less _tenue_ and self-respect than it had formerly. “In my time,” he said, “you might always recognise an _universitaire_ by the correctness of his appearance and bearing, but to-day he is not distinguishable from anybody else.” In England university degrees confer some social position, especially if they have been gained at Oxford or Cambridge; in France they confer little or none, certainly they do not make the recipient _du monde_. The consequence is more and more a severance between the fashionable and the educated classes, and it may even come, in course of time, to this, that a high degree of education may be taken as evidence that a man does not belong to “good society.” [Sidenote: Peasant Life in France.]