The economic and social upper classes appear in more different hues than any other class. They vary all the way from “red” millionaires like _Oil!_'s Bunny Ross to the same novel’s many “malefactors of great wealth.” Except for Disraeli’s heroes, his aristocrats are very often those usually described as “the product of exhausted loins.” Unless members of the English aristocracy take an active interest in the welfare of the classes below their own, they are usually portrayed as despising them. George Meredith’s aristocrat appears to hate these occupants of a world different from his. The Debarry family in _Felix Holt_ has humanitarian impulses, but its political action is directed toward maintaining its elevated position. Trollope’s aristocratic Liberals make efforts toward legislation which will reduce inequities, but far more typical is the old Earl, “Buck” Lostwithiel in _Fame Is the Spur_. A wringer of the poor and accident-maker for inconvenient opponents, he is deterred from horsewhipping Hamer Shawcross only by a raised sabre. The evil aristocrat is not so common in the American novel as in the English. Mrs. Stowe and Tourgée portray him during the latter half of the nineteenth century in the South. Sinclair’s Back Bay Brahmins, years later, take violent action, sticking neither at hypocrisy nor dishonesty, to assert a form of slavery which is more economic than legislative. But aside from villains such as those in _The Plum Tree_, whose power actually comes more from money than lineage, the villainous role is usually assigned to the industrialist rather than the blueblood. This may be a substantiation of the charge that the primary aristocracy of America is one of wealth rather than breeding or cultivation. The Italian noble class is consistently portrayed as an oppressor no matter what the form of government under which it operates. Serfs are freed and reforms are instituted in _Fathers and Sons_, but offstage are the sounds of floggings and the murmurs of oppressed victims. The Marchesa Raversi’s Liberal Party in _The Charterhouse of Parma_ is anything but liberal. Individuals like the radical poet Ferrante Palla find as little favor with her as they do with the absolutist Ernesto IV. Separated from these nobles by time and space, Malraux’s Ferral and his backers have as little sympathy for the Chinese on whom they thrive as does Fabio Conti for Parma’s commoners.