From EssaysIN most other countries of Europe if a man was not born in high and polished society, he had scarcely any other means of gaining admission to it; and honour and dignity, it was supposed, belonged by inheritance to a very limited class of people. Within that circle, therefore, there could be no derogation, and, from without it, there could be no intrusion. But, in this country, persons of every condition have been long entitled to aspire to every situation; and, from the nature of our political constitution, any one who had individual influence, by talent, wealth, or activity, became at once of consequence in the community, and was classed as the open rival or necessary auxiliary of those who had the strongest hereditary claims to importance. But though the circle of society was in this way at all times larger than in the continental nations, and embraced more persons of dissimilar training and habits, it does not appear to have given a tone of repulsion to the manners of those who affected the superiority, till a period comparatively remote. In the days of the Tudors and Stuarts there was a wide pale of separation between the landed aristocracy and the rest of the population; and, accordingly, down at least to the end of Charles the Seconds reign, there seems to have been none of this dull and frozen arrogance in the habits of good company. The true reason of this, however, was, that though the competition was constitutionally open, good education was, in fact, till after this period, confined to the children of the gentry; and a certain parade in equipage and dress, which could not be easily assumed but by the opulent, nor naturally carried but by those who had been long accustomed to it, threw additional difficulties in the way of those who wished to push themselves forward in society, and rendered any other bulwarks unnecessary for the protection of the sanctuary of fashion. 1