band or her father. It is not, therefore, as in England or
Scotland, the aim of a man who has plied his industrious calling with
success to assume the rank and habits of a nobleman or country squire.
The rich man remains in town among his equals. It is only when we
understand this difference in the condition of the social relations in
Germany and in England that the scope and intention of our novel can be
apprehended.

It would be a mistake to suppose that our remarks are only applicable to
the eastern provinces of Prussia. If, perhaps, they are less harshly
manifested in the western division of our kingdom, and indeed in Western
Germany, it is in consequence of noble families being fewer in number,
and the conditions of property being more favorable to the citizen
class. The defective principle is the same, as also the national feeling
in regard to it. It is easily understood, indeed, how this should have
become much stronger since 1850, seeing that the greater and lesser
nobility have blindly united in endeavoring to bring about a
reaction--demanding all possible and impossible privileges and
exemptions, or compensations, and are separating themselves more and
more widely from the body of the nation.

In Silesia and Posen, however, the theatres on which our story is
enacted, other and peculiar elements, though lying, perhaps, beneath the
surface, affect the social relations of the various classes. In both
provinces, but especially in Posen, the great majority of noblemen are
the proprietors of land, and the enactment under Hardenberg and Stein in
1808-10, in regard to peasant rights, had been very imperfectly carried
out in districts where vassalage, as in all countries of Slavonic
origin, was nearly universal. Many estates are of large extent, and
some, indeed, are strictly entailed. These circumstances naturally give
to a country life in Silesia or Posen quite a different character than
that in the Rhine provinces. In Posen, besides, two foreign
elements--found in Silesia also in a far lesser degree--exercise a
mighty influence on the social relations of the people. One is the
Jewish, the other the Polish element. In Posen, the Jews constitute in
the country the class of innkeepers and farmers; of course, they carry
on some trade in addition. The large banking establishments are partly,
the smaller ones almost exclusively, in their hands. They become, by
these means, occasionally the possessors of land; but they re