of mind. It has
the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and
often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place
will get no reverence; but the "old squire" will get reverence. Even
after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a
question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the
common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The
common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to
the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very
existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience
to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could
neither appreciate nor perceive any other.

The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it
creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealth--the
religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the
Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make money; he reckons everything
in coin; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he passes a
little heap. He has a "natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its
own sake". And within good limits the feeling is quite right. So long
as we play the game of industry vigorously and eagerly (and I hope we
shall long play it, for we must be very different from what we are if
we do anything better), we shall of necessity respect and admire those
who play successfully, and a little despise those who play
unsuccessfully. Whether this feeling be right or wrong, it is useless
to discuss; to a certain degree, it is involuntary; it is not for
mortals to settle whether we will have it or not; nature settles for us
that, within moderate limits, we must have it. But the admiration of
wealth in many countries goes far beyond this; it ceases to regard in
any degree the skill of acquisition; it respects wealth in the hands of
the inheritor just as much as in the hands of the maker; it is a simple
envy and love of a heap of gold as a heap of gold. From this our
aristocracy preserves us. There is no country where a "poor devil of a
millionaire is so ill off as in England". The experiment is tried every
day, and every day it is proved that money alone--money pur et
simple--will not buy "London Society". Money is kept down, and, so to
say, cowed by the predominant authority of a different power.

But it may be said that this is no gain; that worship for worship, t