it is still a combination of culture and ancestry that sets the most
highly prized hall-mark on the social items. And indeed the heredity
of such families as the Quincys, the Lowells, the Winthrops, and the
Adamses, which have maintained their superior position for
generations, through sheer force of ability and character, without the
external buttresses of primogeniture and entail, may safely measure
itself against the stained lineage of many European families of high
title. The very absence of titular distinction often causes the lines
to be more clearly drawn; as Mr. Charles Dudley Warner says: "Popular
commingling in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic
countries, but it will not answer in a republic." There is, however,
no universal theory that holds good from New York to California; and
hence the generalising foreigner is apt to see nothing but practical
as well as theoretical equality.

In spite of anything in the foregoing that may seem incompatible, the
fact remains that the distinguishing feature of American society, as
contrasted with the societies of Europe, is the greater approach to
equality that it has made. It is in this sphere, and not in those of
industry, law, or politics, that the British observer must feel that
the American breathes a distinctly more liberal and democratic air
than he. The processes of endosmose and exosmose go on under much
freer conditions; the individual particle is much more ready to
filtrate up or down to its proper level. Mr. W.D. Howells writes that
"once good society contained only persons of noble or gentle birth;
then persons of genteel or sacred callings were admitted; now it
welcomes to its level everyone of agreeable manners or cultivated
mind;" and this, which may be true of modern society in general, is
infinitely more true in America than elsewhere. It might almost be
asserted that everyone in America ultimately finds his proper social