of accurate circumscription and slight favour, the Continental noble, whether Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince of Sicily and of Russia, is simply on a level with the common landed _esquire_ of Britain, and _not_ on a level in very numerous cases. Such being the case, how paramount must be the spirit of aristocracy in Continental society! Our _haute noblesse_--our genuine nobility, who are such in the general feeling of their compatriots--will do _that_ which the phantom of nobility of the Continent will not: the spurious nobles of Germany will not mix, on equal terms, with their untitled fellow-citizens living in the same city and in the same style as themselves; they will not meet them in the same ball or concert-room. Our great territorial nobility, though sometimes forming exclusive circles (but not, however, upon any principle of high birth), do so daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same amusements of races, balls, musical assemblies, with the baronets (or _élite_ of the gentry); with the landed esquires (or middle gentry); with the superior order of tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers, for political weight, or social consideration, but, with us, constitute the lower and broader stratum of the _nobilitas_,[8] or gentry). The obscure baronage of Germany, it is undeniable, insist upon having "an atmosphere of their own"; whilst the Howards, the Stanleys, the Talbots, of England, the Hamiltons, the Douglases, the Gordons, of Scotland, are content to acknowledge a sympathy with the liberal part of their untitled countrymen, in that point which most searchingly tries the principle of aristocratic pride, viz., in their pleasures. To have the same pursuits of business with another may be a result of accident or position; to have the same pleasures, being a matter of choice, argues a community of nature in the _moral_ sensibilities, in that part of our constitution which differences one man from another in the capacities of greatness and elevation. [8] It may be necessary to inform some readers that the word _noble_, by which so large a system of imposition and fraud, as to the composition of foreign society, has long been practised upon the credulity of the British, corresponds to our word _gentlemanly_ (or, rather, to the vulgar word _genteel_, if that word were ever used legally, or _extra gradum_), not merely upon the argument of its _virtual_ and operative value in the general estimate of men (that is, upon the argument that a count, baron, &c., does not, _qua_ such, command any deeper feeling of respect or homage than a British esquire), but also upon the fact, that, originally, in all English registers, as, for instance, in the Oxford matriculation registers, all the upper gentry (knights, esquires, &c.) are technically designated by the word _nobiles_.--_See Chamberlayne, &c._