t than
in England, where we have to recall it by an effort of memory and
reflection; for though our English life is in its core intensely
traditional, Protestantism and commerce have modernized the face of the
land and the aspects of society in a far greater degree than in any
continental country:

"Abroad," says Ruskin, "a building of the eighth or tenth century
stands ruinous in the open streets; the children play round it, the
peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of yesterday nestle
about it, and fit their new stones in its rents, and tremble in
sympathy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as
separate, and of another time; we feel the ancient world to be a real
thing; and one with the new; antiquity is no dream; it is rather the
children playing about the old stones that are the dream. But all is
continuous; and the words "from generation to generation"
understandable here."

This conception of European society as incarnate history is the
fundamental idea of Riehl's books. After the notable failure of
revolutionary attempts conducted from the point of view of abstract
democratic and socialistic theories, after the practical demonstration of
the evils resulting from a bureaucratic system, which governs by an
undiscriminating, dead mechanism, Riehl wishes to urge on the
consideration of his countrymen a social policy founded on the special
study of the people as they are--on the natural history of the various
social ranks. He thinks it wise to pause a little from theorizing, and
see what is the material actually present for theory to work upon. It is
the glory of the Socialists--in contrast with the democratic doctrinaires
who have been too much occupied with the general idea of "the people" to
inquire particularly into the actual life of the people--that they have
thrown themselves with enthusiastic zeal into the study at least of one
social group, namely, the factory operatives; and here lies the secret of
their partial success. But, unfortunately, they have made this special
duty of a single fragment of society the basis of a theory which quietly
substitutes for the small group of Parisian proletaires or English
factory-workers the society of all Europe--nay, of the whole world. And
in this way they have lost the best fruit of their investigations. For,
says Riehl, the more deeply we penetrate into the knowledge of society in
its details, t