6 SEPTEMBER 1845, Page 14

INTERCOURSE OF THE GREAT AND THE LITTLE. AT Coburg and

Gotha the Queen has been living en bour,eoise-- keeping good hours, eschewing state parade, and dining in a pa- vilion at a fair, as good citizens were wont to dine in booths at our Bartlemy Fair when it existed. Her Majesty, moreover, has been made aware that this to her new fashion of life is the custom of the country—that German Sovereigns live thus throughout the year. Are we to have an importation of this free and easy style of courtly life ?. There are two obstacles to its adoption here— one in the character of the Court of St. James's, and one in the character of the English people. The Sovereigns of Germany are the nobility of the German empire, emancipated from the control of a superior by the aboli- tion of the office of Emperor. They are landlords as well as sovereigns ; great part of their revenues are derived from their demesnes; and the means of some scarcely equal the incomes of the wealthiest English nobles. German Sovereigns are what English Peers might be imagined were the Crown to fall into abeyance, the Dukes of Buckingham and his fellows to become Sovereigns of the counties over which they are Lords-Lieutenant, and organize their courts in conformity to their revenues and habits while subjects. The spirit of the age, and still more the pressure of the times when the German empire was dis- solved, prevented the new-made Sovereigns from taking full state upon them. They are a kind of cross-breed between the king and the great landowner managing his own estates. They have had no courtly, traditions to unlearn— no courtly forms to lay aside. But the Court of England, to adopt their style, must change its character by an effort. On the other hand, the people of Germany, as a body, are not politicians. Every Englishman is a politician, and is on good or bad terms with his King or Queen according as the Sovereign% politics please or displease him. The Duke of Saxe Coburg is sine of a civil and kindly reception from his half-subjects half-tenants; but the King or Queen of England's reception from the tax-pay- ing subjects of London, Manchester, or Birmingham, might often depend upon who were Ministers for the time being, and what particular course of policy they were steering. The French, like the English, are politicians ; and Louis Philippe and William the Fourth soon found it expedient to give up walking about the streets alone carrying their own umbrellas. In France, where the monarchy of the Barricades was fettered by no traditional eti- quette, the altered relations of king and subject, when the monarch has ceased to stand in any other than a political or an official relation to the people, has materially restricted the free intercourse of king and subjects. It is this that renders an aristocracy so important an element in a large monarchy. It is not as legislators that our Peers (lv descent) are in general of much use. Their hereditary legislative authority, by combining political power with the influence of the great proprietor, enables them to play in some measure the same part as the German Sovereigns. They are the Crown's deputies to discharge those acts of courtesy, to maintain that friendly and familiar intercourse with the people of this great empire, which the Princes of the small territories of Germany keep up in person. This is a duty too much neglected by our nobilityand by many who have not the noble's excuse for standing aloof from the people. It is the vice of our age and country for the wealthy to withdraw themselves as much as possible from contact with the poor. The labouring classes are paid by the job, not taken into service. Our very domestic servants hold their places by a pre- carious tenure, and if seized with sickness are sent to the hospital. Any one of the better classes, caught at a fair, would deem it 11/3.• cessary to apologize, and explain that curiosity alone took him there. Two castes have been formed in society, between which there axe no permanent relations, or the sympathies which spring from them. At Coburg, the reigning Prince and his royal and noble guests moved about the fair as a matter of course : in London, a proposal to resuscitate Bow Fair has elicited eloquent and pathetic remon- strances from the whole "respectable class of society." •The Ger- man fair was a scene of merriment, as vulgar as any Cockney could wish, but decorous and innocent. The London fair would probably be neither decorous nor innocent, because the absence ef the class which piques itself upon correct behaviour is &signal fox licence.