) had freed them from the nets of the _Philister_:

"Ihr mogt mirimmer ungescheut
Gleich Bluchern Denkmal setzen!
Von Franzosen hat er euch befreit,
Ich von Philister-netzen."

Goethe could hardly claim to be the apostle of public spirit; but he is
eminently the man who helps us to rise to a lofty point of observation,
so that we may see things in their relative proportions.

The most interesting chapters in the description of the "Fourth Estate,"
which concludes the volume, are those on the "Aristocratic Proletariat"
and the "Intellectual Proletariat." The Fourth Estate in Germany, says
Riehl, has its centre of gravity not, as in England and France, in the
day laborers and factory operatives, and still less in the degenerate
peasantry. In Germany the _educated_ proletariat is the leaven that sets
the mass in fermentation; the dangerous classes there go about, not in
blouses, but in frock coats; they begin with the impoverished prince and
end in the hungriest _litterateur_. The custom that all the sons of a
nobleman shall inherit their father's title necessarily goes on
multiplying that class of aristocrats who are not only without function
but without adequate provision, and who shrink from entering the ranks of
the citizens by adopting some honest calling. The younger son of a
prince, says Riehl, is usually obliged to remain without any vocation;
and however zealously he may study music, painting, literature, or
science, he can never be a regular musician, painter, or man of science;
his pursuit will be called a "passion," not a "calling," and to the end
of his days he remains a dilettante. "But the ardent pursuit of a fixed
practical calling can alone satisfy the active man." Direct legislation
cannot remedy this evil. The inheritance of titles by younger sons is
the universal custom, and custom is stronger than law. But if all
government preference for the "aristocratic proletariat" were withdrawn,
the sensible men among them would prefer emigration, or the pursuit of
some profession, to the hungry distinction of a title without rents.

The intellectual proletaires Riehl calls the "church militant" of the
Fourth Estate in Germany. In no other country are they so numerous; in
no other country is the trade in material and industrial capital so far
exceeded by the wholesale and retail trade, the traffic and the usury, in
the intellectual capital of the nation. _Germany yields more
intellec