But you know how often it
happens in England that a cultivated person, a person of the sort that
Mr. Charles Sumner[466] describes, talking to one of the lower class, or
even of the middle class, feels and cannot but feel, that there is
somehow a wall of partition between himself and the other, that they
seem to belong to two different worlds. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions,
susceptibilities, language, manners,--everything is different. Whereas,
with a French peasant, the most cultivated man may find himself in
sympathy, may feel that he is talking to an equal. This is an experience
which has been made a thousand times, and which may be made again any
day. And it may be carried beyond the range of mere conversation, it may
be extended to things like pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking,
and so on. In general the pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking of
English people, when once you get below that class which Mr. Charles
Sumner calls the class of gentlemen, are to one of that class
unpalatable and impossible.
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