Such estates are ever more and more frequently becoming the property of the merchant or manufacturer from the town, or perhaps of the neighboring proprietor of the same inferior rank, who has lately settled in the country, and become entitled to the exercise of equal rights with the hereditary owner.

There is no essential difference in social culture between the two classes, but there is a mighty difference between the habits of their lives.

The mercantile class of citizens is in Germany more refined than in any other country, and has more political ambition than the corresponding class in England has yet exhibited.

The families of public functionaries constitute the other half of the cultivated citizen class; and as the former have the superiority in point of wealth, so these bear the palm in respect of intellectual culture and administrative talent.

Almost all authors, since the days of Luther, have belonged to this class.