will never again be a prisoner as he
was; he can watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the river,
travellers on the road, and the stars at night; happy prisoner! his eyes
have broken gaol! And again he who has learned to love an art or science
has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches; if prosperity come,
he will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not slumber and
forget himself in the lap of money, or spend his hours in counting idle
treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic
touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into
living delight and satisfaction. _Etre et pas avoir_--to be, not to
possess--that is the problem of life. To be wealthy, a rich nature is
the first requisite and money but the second. To be of a quick and
healthy blood, to share in all honourable curiosities, to be rich in
admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others,
to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear
possession in absence or unkindness--these are the gifts of fortune
which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. For what
can a man possess, or what can he enjoy, except himself? If he enlarge
his nature, it is then that he enlarges his estates. If his nature be
happy and valiant, he will enjoy the universe as if it were his park and
orchard.

But money is not only to be spent; it has also to be earned. It is not
merely a convenience or a necessary in social life; but it is the coin
in which mankind pays his wages to the individual man. And from this
side, the question of money has a very different scope and application.
For no man can be honest who does not work. Service for service. If the
farmer buys corn, and the labourer ploughs and reaps, and the baker
sweats in his hot bakery, plainly you who eat must do something in your
turn. It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your
knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient
situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough
to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the
point of the inquiry; and you must first have _bought the sixpence_.
Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit
desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see to it that
there is some reciprocity between him and mankind; that he pays his
expenditure in s