probable that the London spectators went the lengths which our outsiders
go in trying to verify an English duke who is about to marry an American
heiress. The London vulgar, if not better bred than our vulgar, are
better fed on the sight of social grandeur, and have not a lifelong
famine to satisfy, as ours have. Besides, whatever gulf birth and wealth
have fixed between the English classes, it is mystically bridged by that
sentiment of family which I have imagined the ruling influence in
England. In a country where equality has been glorified as it has been
in ours, the contrast of conditions must breed a bitterness in those of
a lower condition which is not in their hearts there; or if it is, the
alien does not know it.

What seems certain is the interest with which every outward
manifestation of royal and social state is followed, and the leisure
which the poor have for a vicarious indulgence in its luxuries and
splendors. One would say that there was a large leisure class entirely
devoted to these pleasures, which cost it nothing, but which may have
palled on the taste of those who pay for them. Of course, something like
this is the case in every great city; but in London, where society is
enlarged to the bounds of the national interests, the demand of such a
leisure class might very well be supposed to have created the supply.
Throughout the London season, and measurably throughout the London year,
there is an incessant appeal to the curiosity of the common people which
is never made in vain. Somewhere a drum is throbbing or a bugle sounding
from dawn till dusk; the red coat is always passing singly or in
battalions, afoot or on horseback; the tall bear-skin cap weighs upon
the grenadier's brow,

"And the hapless soldier's sigh,"