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Show THE GERMAN NOBLESSE. The present "noblesses" of Germany is less lawless, but it may be doubted whether it be less mischievous or weight less obstructively on the land than in earlier days. History teaches us that true patriotism is not to be looked for from a [unreadable] dependent for its importance on the repression of those below them. Such a body, like the Polish noblesse, care only for themselves, never for the interests and liberties of the people. The German "Adel" is unfortunately distinguished by two broad marks, incompatible with the conditions of a real aristocracy and fatal to the harmony and union of a country namely, infinitesimally divided fortunes and incalculably multiplied titles. Not comparable with the landed gentry of England in wealth, consequence or usefulness, it has yet a jealousy of contact or commixture with its untilled fellow-citizens, which would be thought equally ridiculous and monstrous in an English duke. The English nobleman who represents a great family (the younger members of which revert to the classes below) cannot separate himself from the commoners of his land if he would ; the German noble, all members of whose family, male and female, whether fifty or five hundred in number, assume the same title, cannot do otherwise. True to their fatal traditions they hold themselves at the same fictitious distance from their fellow burghers on a rigidly maintained line running forever parallel but never meeting, thus leaving a chasm between class and class doubly hurtful to the country; for it is manned with empty arrogance on the one side and deadly hatred on the other. It were well if the feeling excited in the middle classes of Germany by these fictitious distinctions were only that of scorn, for that is allied to moral nobility; but it is to the example of the noblesse that is traceable the ignoble greed for petty titles which pervades the whole body politic, and which, taking all ranks together, has made of Germany, and especially of Berlin, little more, socially speaking, than a magnified ????. With such influences as these overshadowing a great community, no diffusion of light and warmth from above, no patronage of art and letters worthy the name, is possible. A mob of needy noblesse are seen, especially in Prussia, swarming in court and army, content to bear in most cases the merest fraction of a title rather than none; families without heads, and unfortunately without terminations , usurping the prerogatives of rank without acknowledging its duties, and holding themselves above entering the learned professions, much in the same way as the Emperor Sigismund held himself to be "super grandmaticam." |