Upon such a point the remarks of a leisurely, thoughtful, cultivated writer, like Richard Grant White, a man who had enjoyed exceptional opportunities of comparing the effect upon daily life of English aristocracy and American democracy, are more instructive than the elaborate treatises of political theorists or the generalizations of historians. The testimony of such writers bears out the inference which careful students might draw from English history, that the influence of a local and landed aristocracy is far more favourable, than that even of a landed democracy, to the jealous and resolute assertion of legal rights, to a strenuous and successful resistance to the encroachments of power, social or political, upon the property, the comfort, the liberty, and the privileges, of individuals or communities. The moral of Mr. Grant White's sketches of English and American life is, that the English peasant or tradesman is far safer from practical oppression or injustice than the American farmer or citizen; that an Englishman, whatever his rank, is far more free to speak his mind, and far more likely to have a mind worth speaking, than one of the same position in France, or even in Massachusetts. The lively interest in, the diffused knowledge of, politics and public matters, found among educated, and even half-educated men and women throughout the upper and middle classes of England, evidently impressed Mr. White by the contrast it presented to the indifference of American 'Society' to State and Federal politics. He notes particularly the higher tone, the wider knowledge, the freedom from petty class and personal concerns, the broader range of thought, the familiarity with subjects of general human interest, which characterize the conversation of an English dinner-table or drawing-room, as compared with that of American clubs and parlours. He speaks, with the bitterness of a man often and deeply bored, of the limited range of American table-talk, the prominence of the 'shop,' the professional interests of each chance assemblage; the price of stocks and railway shares, and the chances and changes of Wall Street; the inferior tone of thought among men and women alike, in the best or at least the wealthiest society of New York and Philadelphia. In this he is incidentally confirmed by so observant and candid a social critic as Laurence Oliphant. There is an American society of higher cultivation and loftier interests; but that society, except in Boston, is necessarily scattered and somewhat exclusive; and, standing wholly aloof from politics, lacks the knowledge of history, of legislation, of social and economic interests, of current opinion, of foreign affairs--which is in itself a sort of liberal, if necessarily superficial, education. American ladies, and even gentlemen, hardly know who are the Senators for their State, much less who is the representative of their district; care nothing for, and know little of, the debates in Congress, still