As with their amusements, so with their graver employments; the same mutual repulsion continues to divide the two orders through life. The nobles either live in gloomy seclusion upon their private funds, wherever the privilege of primogeniture has enabled them to do so; or, having no funds at all (the case of ninety-nine in one hundred), they go into the army; that profession, the profession of arms, being regarded as the only one compatible with an _edelmann's_ pretensions. Such was once the feeling in England; such is still the feeling on the Continent. It is a prejudice naturally clinging to a semi-barbarous (because growing out of a barbarous) state, and, in its degree, clinging to every stage of imperfect civilization; and, were there no other argument, this would be a sufficient one, that England, under free institutions, has outrun the Continent, in real civilization, by a century; a fact which is concealed by the forms of luxurious refinement in a few exclusive classes, too often usurping the name and honours of radical civilization. From the super-appreciation of the military profession arises a corresponding contempt of all other professions whatsoever _paid by fellow-citizens_, and not by the King or the State. The clerical profession is in the most abject degradation throughout Southern Germany; and the reason why this forces itself less imperiously upon the public notice is, that, in rural situations, from the absence of a resident gentry (speaking generally), the pastor is brought into rare collision with those who style themselves _noble_; whilst, in towns, the clergy find people enough to countenance those who, being in the same circumstances as to comfort and liberal education, are also under the same ban of rejection from the "nobility," or born gentry. The legal profession is equally degraded; even a barrister or advocate holds a place in the public esteem little differing from that of an Old Bailey attorney of the worst class. And this result is the less liable to modification from personal qualities, inasmuch as there is no great theatre (as with us) for individual display. Forensic eloquence is unknown in Germany, as it is too generally on the Continent, from the defect of all popular or open judicatures. A similar defect of deliberative assemblies--such, at least, as represent any popular influences and debate with open doors--intercepts the very possibility of senatorial eloquence.[9] That of the pulpit only remains. But even of this--whether it be from want of the excitement and contagious emulation from the other fields of oratory, or from the peculiar genius of Lutheranism--no models have yet arisen that could, for one moment, sustain a comparison with those of England or France. The highest names in this department would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any of that significance or promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or Bourdaloue, to those even who have no