divided into an upper and lower class. To
the former belongs members of houses that were ruling when the modern
Empire was established, and, while excluding the Emperor, who stands
above them, includes sovereign houses and mediatized houses. Some of
the ancient privileges of the nobility, such as exemption from
taxation, and the right to certain high offices, have been abolished,
but in practice the nobility still occupy the most important charges
in the administration and in the army. The privileges of the
mediatized princes consist of exemption from conscription, the
enjoyment of the Principle called "equality of birth," which prevents
the burgher wife of a noble acquiring her husband's rank, and the
right to have their own "house law" for the regulation of family
disputes and family affairs generally. No increase to the high
nobility of Germany can accrue as no addition will ever be made to the
once sovereign and mediatized families. With the exception of these
houses the rest of the German nobility, hereditary and non-hereditary,
is accounted as belonging to the lower nobility. That part of the
German aristocracy who refuse to go to court, and are accordingly
called by the name Fronde, first given to the opponents of Cardinal
Mazarin, in the reign of Louis XIV, consist chiefly of a few old
families of Prussian Poland, Hannover (the Guelphs), Brunswick,
Nassau, Hessen, and other annexed German territories, and of some
great Catholic houses in Bavaria and the Rhineland. Their dislike is
directed not so much against the Empire as against Prussia. The
Kulturkampf had the effect of setting a small number of ancient
Prussian ultramontane families against the Government.

Not much that is complimentary can be said of the German aristocracy
as a whole. "Serenissimus" is to-day as frequently the subject of
bitter, if often humorous, caricature in the comic press as ever he
was. A few of the class, like Prince Fuerstenberg, Prince Hohenlohe,
Count Henkel-Donnersmarck and some others engage successfully in
commerce; many are practical farmers and have done a good deal for
agriculture; several are deputies to Parliament; but on the whole the
foreigner gets the impression that the class as such contributes but a
small percentage of what it might and should in the way of brains,
industry, or example to the welfare and the progress of the Empire.

It is difficult to communicate an impression of the Court, whether at
the Schloss