The gentry of the city are separated from the citizens by dress and titles. As much as the nobles look down upon them, so do they upon the citizens, and these again upon the peasants. A merchant has already a place among the gentry, especially if he occupies some city office or has wealth. In the families also of merchants of distinction, as the first wholesale houses are denominated, and in those of traders of consideration, as the possessors of large retail shops are called, a pleasing change may be observed in the mode of life. The coarse luxury of a former generation is restrained, better training at home and greater rectitude in business are everywhere perceptible. It is already a subject of boast that the members of old solid commercial houses are not those who sue for patents of nobility; nay, such vain new nobles are despised by the high commercial class.[85] And the unprejudiced cavalier is brought to confess, that in fact there is no difference between the wife of the landed proprietor, who goes with dignity into the cow-house to overlook the skimming of the cream, and the wife of a merchant of distinction at Frankfort, who during the fair sits in the warehouse; "she is well and handsomely dressed, she gives orders to her people like a princess, she knows how to behave to people of rank, commoners, and those of the lower classes, each according to their class and position; she reads and understands many languages, she judges sensibly, and knows how to live, and bring up her children well." Other circumstances, besides the intellectual energy of the time, contributed to elevate the German merchant. The influx of the expelled Huguenots had not in some respects been favourable to our German character, yet the influence that they exercised on German commerce must be highly estimated. About 1750 their families dwelt in almost all the larger commercial cities; they formed there a small aristocratic community, lived in social seclusion, and maintained carefully their relations with their connections in France, who, up to the present day, form an aristocracy of French wholesale traders, serious and strict, and rather of the old-fashioned aristocratic school. It was among the German Huguenots that the puritanical character of the Genevan and Flemish Separatists found many adherents, their staid demeanour had exercised an influence on other great houses both in Frankfort and along the Rhine. But German commerce had now acquired new vigour, and healthy labour raised the tone of its character. The impoverished country again took an honourable share in the commerce of the world. Already did the Germans export their iron and steel wares from Mark, Solingen and Suhl, cloth from all the provinces, fine cloth also of Portuguese and Spanish wool from Aix-la-Chapelle, damask from Westphalia, linen and lawn from Silesia; to England, Spain, Portugal, and the colonies, whose products in return