A refined way of speaking the native language does something for social position in England. English people say of a man, “He has a good accent, he speaks like a gentleman;” in France so many middle-class people speak well habitually that pure speech has almost ceased to be a distinction. Even if the men had not broken down that barrier, clever Frenchwomen would have removed it. How many of them have I met with, in the middle classes, who, for enunciation, articulation, readiness and accuracy of expression, and precision of accent, spoke quite as well as ladies of rank! This, too, in a country where clear, and prompt, and accurate speaking is valued and appreciated to a degree unknown in England. It is only the most cultivated English people who dare to employ, in conversation, the full powers of their noble tongue; the others shrink from the best use of it, and accustom themselves to forms of speech that constitute, in reality, a far inferior language, in which it is so difficult to express thought and sentiment that they are commonly left unexpressed.[15] [Sidenote: Culture _versus_ Rank.] [Sidenote: French Aristocracy unaccustomed to work.] [Sidenote: Character of the French Rural Aristocracy.] [Sidenote: Intellectual Industry of some Retired Tradesmen.] [Sidenote: Barbarians in the Upper Classes.] [Sidenote: Devotion to Barbaric Sports.] [Sidenote: Contempt for Trade and Commerce.] [Sidenote: Liberty of Primæval Instincts.] Passing from ordinary education to that higher culture which can only be attained by a sedulous attachment to intellectual pursuits in mature life, I should say that here, again, mental elevation has nothing to do with social rank. In France the time is at hand, if it has not already arrived, when high culture may be taken as evidence that its possessor does not belong to the aristocracy. Speaking for the present of France only, I may offer two or three reasons in explanation of this curious anomaly. The French aristocracy, disdaining all work that is remunerative, does not enter the professions, and so misses the culture that the professions give. But, beyond this, the French aristocracy is unaccustomed to work of any kind, and as culture is usually unattainable without work, and as there is not even a high standard of early education in that aristocracy, it passes its time in ways that do not tend to culture except so far as polite and graceful social intercourse favours it. If the reader wishes to be just he will not think of the minor French rural aristocracy as “a class of rakes,” but as a very numerous class of more or less wealthy idlers, living half the year on their estates, four months in some country town, and a month or two at Paris or the sea-side. Their life is healthy and natural for the most part, and they often attain a great age; but they are, as a class, much more addicted to rural sports than to intellectual or artistic pursuits of any kind. There