ent phenomenon which presents ample matter for
reflection to those who are fain to observe or describe the various
social zones; and possibly an enquiry into the causes that bring about
this centralization may do more than merely justify the probability of
this episode; it may be of service to serious interests which some
day will be more deeply rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed,
experience is as meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.

In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the great
nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded streets. When
the Duc d'Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue Montmartre in
the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his gates--for which
beneficent action, to say nothing of his other virtues, he was held in
such veneration that the whole quarter turned out in a body to follow
his funeral--when the Duke, I say, chose this site for his house, he
did so because that part of Paris was almost deserted in those days. But
when the fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the d'Uzes
family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was occupied by a
banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find themselves out of their
element among shopkeepers, left the Place Royale and the centre of
Paris for good, and crossed the river to breathe freely in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, where palaces were reared already about the great
hotel built by Louis XIV for the Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his
legitimated offspring. And indeed, for people accustomed to a stately
life, can there be more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud,
the street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous
quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile or manufacturing
district are completely at variance with the lives of nobles. The
shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when the great world is
thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life begins among the former
when the latter have gone to rest. Their day's calculations never
coincide; the one class represents the expenditure, the other the
receipts. Consequently their manners and customs are diametrically
opposed.

Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An aristocracy is in
a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and
the proletariat may be said to be its orga