when it is general amongst a whole class, springs a strong determination so to discipline the members of the class that they shall not make themselves disagreeable to the majority. Hence lovers of good manners have a preference for the richer classes quite apart from a love of physical luxury or a snobbish desire to be associated with people of rank. For the same reason a lover of good manners dreads poverty or semi-poverty for his children, because even a moderate degree of poverty (not to speak of the acute forms of it) may compel them to associate with the undisciplined. What gentleman would like his son to live habitually with the card-players I have described? ESSAY X. DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH. The most remarkable peculiarity about the desire to establish distinctions of rank is not that there should be definite gradations amongst people who have titles, but that, when the desire is strong in a nation, public opinion should go far beyond heralds and parchments and gazettes, and establish the most minute gradations amongst people who have nothing honorific about them. When once the rule is settled by a table of precedence that an earl is greater than a baron, we simply acquiesce in the arrangement, as we are ready to believe that a mandarin with a yellow jacket is a much-to-be-honored sort of mandarin; but what is the power that strikes the nice balance of social advantages in favor of Mr. Smith as compared with Mr. Jones, when neither one nor the other has any title, or ancestry, or anything whatever to boast of? Amongst the many gifts that are to be admired in the fair sex this seems one of the most mysterious, that ladies can so decidedly fix the exact social position of every human being. Men soon find themselves bewildered by conflicting considerations, but a woman goes to the point at once, and settles in the most definite manner that Smith is certainly the superior of Jones. This may bring upon me the imputation of being a democrat and a leveller. No, I rather like a well-defined social distinction when it has reality. Real distinctions keep society picturesque and interesting; what I fail to appreciate so completely are the fictitious little distinctions that have no basis in reality, and appear to be instituted merely for the sake of establishing differences that do not naturally exist. It seems to be an unfortunate tendency that seeks unapparent differences, and it may have a bad effect on character by forcing each man back upon the consideration of his own claims that it would be better for him to forget.