It is just this "perfect knighthood" that an envious democracy sneers at and puts down. I do not say that all democracies are necessarily envious, but they often are so, especially when they first assert themselves, and whilst in that temper they are very willing to ostracize gentlemen, or compel them to adopt bad manners. I have some hopes that the democracies of the future may be taught by authors and artists to appreciate natural gentlemanhood; but so far as we know them hitherto they seem intolerant of dignity, and disposed to attribute it (very unjustly) to individual self-conceit. The personages most popular in democratic countries are often remarkably deficient in dignity, and liked the better for the want of it, whilst if on the positive side they can display occasional coarseness they become more popular still. Then I should say, that although democratic feeling raises the lower classes and increases their self-respect, which is indeed one of the greatest imaginable benefits to a nation, it has a tendency to fix one uniform type of behavior and of thought as the sole type in conformity with what is accepted for "common sense," and that type can scarcely, in the nature of things, be a very elevated one. I have been much struck, in France, by the prevalence of what may be not inaccurately defined as the commercial traveller type, even in classes where you would scarcely expect to meet with it. One little descriptive anecdote will illustrate what I mean. Having been invited to a stag-hunt in the Côte d'Or, I sat down to _déjeuner_ with the sportsmen in a good country-house or château (it was an old place with four towers), and in the midst of the meal in came a man smoking a cigar. After a bow to the ladies he declined to eat anything, and took a chair a little apart, but just opposite me. He resumed his hat and went on smoking with a _sans-gêne_ that rather surprised me under the circumstances. He put one arm on the side-board: the hand hung down, and I perceived that it was dirty (so was the shirt), and that the nails had edges of ebony. On his chin there was a black stubble of two days' growth. He talked very loudly, and his dress and manners were exactly those of a bagman just arrived at his inn. Who and what could the man be? I learned afterwards that he had begun life as a distinguished pupil of the _Ecole Polytechnique_, that since then he had distinguished himself as an officer of artillery and had won the Legion of Honor on the field of battle, that he belonged to one of the principal families in the neighborhood, and had nearly 2000_l._ a year from landed property.