were obliged to get rid of the nobility, who formed an estate in their petty realms, and in the Diets constantly opposed the extension of their sovereign power. Menzel says: War, the headsman's axe, and emigration almost entirely exterminated the old free-spirited nobility. Here and there only might a gentleman be found living on his estate. Their place was taken by foreign adventurers. The example set by Austria was followed by the other German courts, and the families of ancient nobility were forced to admit to their rank unworthy creatures-the favoured mistresses of the princes and their offspring.' The revolution of 1848 completed the ruin of the gentry. The princes lent a hand to consummate their destruction, not then to establish themselves as despots, but to stave off their own ruin. The gentleman has therefore disappeared in Germany as a class. He has no political rights, no social position, different from the bürger. The latter is now the representative man. He is wealthy; the gentleman poor. He has acquired his wealth by scraping money together, by screwing down home expenses, and holding his workmen's noses inflexibly to the grindstone. He has made himself by pushing. He has trodden his way, regardless whom he jostles and on whose corns he treads. Such a man is useful, but he is not ornamental; valuable, but disagreeable. The market, not the drawing-room, is his proper sphere; men, not women, his proper associates. He may spend his money on works of art-this is most exceptional-but he cannot buy culture. Most of his gold goes in eating and drinking. His house is badly furnished. His wife and daughters, slipshod, in nightcaps and petticoats, ramble about the rooms till noon, and then blaze for an hour or two in gaudy attire, put on with a pitchfork. Philistinism, not chivalry, is the characteristic of German society, because the bürger has risen to the top and overspread the surface of society. Culture can no more be had for money than could spiritual gifts by Simon Magus. It may be acquired by one not born to it; but then it must be acquired in early life, or the twang of the old tongue remains. The haunt of all German men-his 'Lokal'is the last place where it may be learned. If he could but wrench himself from his club or tavern, and spend his evenings at home, he would become less loud in talk, more considerate of women, less uncouth, and more disinterested. His Philistinism would disappear; it would thaw under the genial warmth of his wife and daughters, and the vernal flowers of culture would shoot out of the rugged soil. On the separation of sexes I have said so much, that I do not think it necessary to do more here than quote the words of a Russian officer of distinction. 'In Germany men live very little at home, the majority prefer spending their leisure in the tavern, or in the club, to devoting it to their family at home. The German hates restraint; seated behind his mug of beer, with two or three boon companions, he will pass long hours, lost in some interminable, philosophical discussion, in which, indeed, he is in his element. But, the more he feels at his ease in this society, and in this locality, the less comfortable he is when surrounded by ladies and in his home. He looks on all social gatherings in which both sexes meet as a sort of intolerable corvée, to which he must indeed submit once or twice in the year, which the tyranny of circumstances imposes on every master of a household. On such occasions, made solemn by their rarity, the host thinks he is bound to surround his guests with all the superfluities of pompous luxury, though in everyday life he denies himself even rudimentary comforts. Consequently, a German detests an impromptu visitor. He likes to be informed long before that a visit is intended, that he may prepare laboriously for it; for to receive a friend without ceremony is regarded as against all good manners. And, on the other hand, a visitor, however intimate he may be, would run the risk of being set down as ignorant of the first principles of etiquette, were he to present himself in the evening, or at dinner time uninvited.'1 In England every country house and parsonage has been a quiet nursery of gentility and purity. In Germany there are few country houses, and the parsonages are occupied by families of bürger or bauer origin. The pastors are, with rare exceptions, men of cultivated minds, men whom it is a pleasure to meet and converse with. But their wives are of citizen class, gentle, domestic women, but without the polish that is expected of the parson's wife in England, and she and her husband are not received into the best society. The pastor is poor, and has to scramble on with a large family on a small income. He cannot give his children a gentle education. In England the hall and the rectory are on terms of intimacy. The daughter of the parson not unfrequently becomes lady at the hall, and the younger son of the squire is settled in the country rectory. We, who live in England, have little idea of the influence on culture possessed by the parsonage in our island. The young ladies from it grow up active in good works, loving and caring for the poor, looking after them in sickness, taking interest in the school-girls, teaching the lads in night-schools, organising cottage-garden shows and harvest festivals. 1 Baron v. Kaulbars, 'Notes d'un Officier Russe sur l'Armée Allemande, in Bulletin de la Réunion des Officiers, 1877. And when they pass, as they so often do, to country homes of their own, in the hall or rectory, they carry with them their sympathy for those beneath them, and are in their generation fountains of light, stars beaming down into dark hearts, and making them twinkle with smiles. It has been my fate to be for some years in parishes without resident gentry, and where there have never been resident incumbents. The moral and social condition of these parishes is dark indeed compared to that where hall and rectory were ever influencing farmhouse and cottage. I have seen the rudest village bumpkins humanised by a winter night-school conducted by the rector's daughters -not humanised only, but made gentle and chivalrous. The rectory party and those in the hall are on familiar and often affectionate terms. There is no perceptible difference in culture between them; indeed, one family by birth and bringing up is as good as the other. The parsonage interests the hall in the matters of the parish, and so all classes meet in general sympathy and exchange of kindlinesses, and in so doing react on one another; the poor receive light from above, and in return give back what is as precious-the feeling of that to which so ugly a name has been given-human solidarity, but which in Christian parlance is real charity. The rich knows the poor not by the outside only, but is acquainted with his wants, his shortcomings, his temptations, and seeks to help him, at least to make allowance for his deficiencies. Philistinism begins with dissociation of man from man, and class from class. CHAPTER XVIII. ARCHITECTURE. Why should you fall into so deep an O? FRANCE is the land of cathedrals, Belgium of town halls, and Germany of castles. The history of each country gives the reason. In the midst of internal peace the Church flourished, and the cathedrals of France are its most magnificent monuments. Commerce throve-in the Netherlands, and the corporate life of the towns was developed along with it, manifesting itself in the splendid hôtels de ville. Unhappy Germany, torn by feuds, broken up among a thousand little princes and ten thousand lesser nobles, shows to this day, in the ruins of its castles crowning every hill, the scars of internal strife. Ever since the Gothic revival began, our English architects have rushed pencil and note-book in hand across the channel, to pick up ideas from French ecclesiastical and domestic architecture for reproduction in England. The result of these excursions is apparent everywhere. We have French town halls, French churches, French colleges. Even Barry could not build his Houses of Parliament in English Perpendicular without putting on them French Renaissance roofs. Yet with this foreign adjunct, allowable under the circumstances, the Westminster Palace is by far the most pleasing production of English architec |