These middle-class Germans were no doubt excellent, respectable people in their way, but they had little in common with the Norwegian country folk. They were better educated, they had more worldly wisdom, their experience in their own cities had trained them to subject their emotional nature to their intellect. In order to push on to success in their German communities, where antagonistic and powerful magnates left but little scope for daring and straightforwardness, they had learned to value diplomacy and discretion. They had no sympathies with the natives, whom they regarded as semi-barbarians, and all their intercourse with them was diplomatic and insincere, and their sole motive was profit. The honesty, the pride, the generosity of the Norwegian peasantry were well known to them, but they took advantage of these characteristics, which they regarded as expensive luxuries. The cities however became the seats of the educational establishments, and the Norwegian youth who were intended for the professions came to the cities and mingled there with the German element. On the other hand, the sons of the citizens went into the country in professional capacities and created there a middle class strongly impregnated with German culture. In this manner a sharp line of demarcation arose between the upper and middle classes on the one hand and the peasantry on the other, the former being strongly influenced by German culture, the latter clinging tenaciously to the Norwegian. It is no slur on the German character and German culture to say that it involved degeneration in no small degree. It partook of the drawbacks of our civilization, and what happened in Norway has happened in every country where modern civilization has come into contact with nations whose virtues and noble qualities have rested as much on ignorance and the absence of temptation as on inborn worth. Thanks to the historical development we have indicated, the Norwegian upper and middle classes, as well as the whole of the urban populations, developed characteristics which drew upon them the contempt of the peasants. Their eagerness for profit, their love of money, their indifference to the great, the noble, and the beautiful, their cringing attitude towards authorities and towards the wealthy, their sacrifice of public interests to private welfare, their susceptibility to the influence of foreign fashion, manners, and vices,—all this tended to lower the upper and middle classes in the eyes of the peasants.