nobility, the whole system is ridiculous; it has no _national_ basis.
The source of its honour is ineradicably tainted. It is the _reductio
ad absurdum_ of the idea of aristocratic society. It is divorced from
the real body of democracy. It sets no authoritative standard of
taste. If anything could reconcile the British Radical to his House of
Lords, it would be the rankness of taste, the irresponsible freaks of
individual caprice, that rule in a country where there is no carefully
polished noblesse to set the pattern. George William Curtis puts the
case well: "Fine society is no exotic, does not avoid, but all that
does not belong to it drops away like water from a smooth statue. We
are still peasants and parvenues, although we call each other princes
and build palaces. Before we are three centuries old we are
endeavouring to surpass, by imitating, the results of all art and
civilisation and social genius beyond the sea. By elevating the
standard of expense we hope to secure select society, but have only
aggravated the necessity of a labour integrally fatal to the kind of
society we seek."

It would, of course, be a serious mistake to assume that, because
there are no titles and no theory of caste in the United States, there
are no social distinctions worth the trouble of recognition. Besides
the crudely obvious elevation of wealth and "smartness" already
referred to, there are inner circles of good birth, of culture, and so
on, which are none the less practically recognised because they are
theoretically ignored. Of such are the old Dutch clans of New York,
which still, I am informed, regard families like the Vanderbilts as
upstarts and parvenues. In Chicago there is said to be an inner circle
of forty or fifty families which is recognised as the "best society,"
though by no means composed of the richest citizens. In Boston, though
the Almighty Dollar now plays a much more important rôle than before,