Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, _what_ he is worth.
A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is _there_ a man good for _so_ much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a bill."
Go abroad, to Rome for example--You are smothered beneath the petticoats of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing. Make your way into Germany--What do you find there? an aristocracy of functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess--for the women there must be _better_-half even in their titles--you find society led, or, to speak more correctly, society _consisting_ of functionaries, and they, every office son of them, and their wives--nay, their very curs--alike insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at _me_!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you must contrive to be the _servant_ of the public before you are permitted to be the _master_: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition to despise, the _canaille_.
Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies, conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial and a Parisian aristocracy--the former a servile mob of placemen, one in fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter--oh! my poor head, what a _clanjaffrey_ of _journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes_, dramatists, novelists, _vaudivellistes_, poets, literary ladies, lovers of literary ladies, _hommes de lettres, claqueurs, littérateurs, gérants, censeurs, rapporteurs_, and _le diable boiteux_ verily knows what else!