The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy--The desire to draw a line--Substitution of external limitations for realities--The high life of nature--Value of gentlemen in a State--Odiousness of the narrow class-spirit--Julian Fane--Perfect knighthood--Democracies intolerant of dignity--Tendency of democracies to fix one uniform type of manners--That type not a high one--A descriptive anecdote--Knowledge and taste reveal themselves in manners--Dr. Arnold on the absence of gentlemen in France and Italy--Absence of a class with traditional good manners--Language defiled by the vulgarity of popular taste--Influence of aristocratic opinion limited, that of democratic opinion universal--Want of elevation in the French _bourgeoisie_--Spirit of the provincial democracy--Spirit of the Parisian democracy--Sentiments and acts of the Communards--Romantic feeling towards the past--Hopes for liberal culture in the democratic idea--Aristocracies think too much of persons and positions--That we ought to forget persons and apply our minds to things, and phenomena, and ideas. All you say against the narrowness of the aristocratic spirit is true and to the point; but I think that you and your party are apt to confound together two states of feeling which are essentially distinct from each other. There is an illiberal spirit of aristocracy, and there is also a liberal one. The illiberal spirit does not desire to improve itself, having a full and firm belief in its own absolute perfection; its sole anxiety is to exclude others, to draw a circular line, the smaller the better, provided always that it gets inside and can keep the millions out. We see this spirit, not only in reference to birth, but in even fuller activity with regard to education and employment--in the preference for certain schools and colleges, for class reasons, without regard to the quality of the teaching--in the contempt for all professions but two or three, without regard to the inherent baseness or nobility of the work that has to be done in them: so that the question asked by persons of this temper is not whether a man has been well trained in his youth, but if he has been to Eton and Oxford; not whether he is honorably laborious in his manhood, but whether he belongs to the Bar, or the Army, or the Church. This spirit is evil in its influence, because it substitutes external limitations for the realities of the intellect and the soul, and makes those realities themselves of no account wherever its traditions prevail. This spirit cares nothing for culture, nothing for excellence, nothing for the superiorities that make men truly great; all it cares for is to have reserved seats in the great assemblage of the world. Whatever you do, in fairness and honesty, against this evil and inhuman spirit of aristocracy, the best minds of this age approve; but there is another spirit of aristocracy which does