“I do not think,” answered Gray, “that when a man feels he is doing good in his own way he need reproach himself that he is not doing good in some other way to which he is not urged by special duty, and from which he is repelled by constitutional temperament. I do not, for instance, see that because you have a very large fortune you are morally obliged to keep correspondent establishments, and adopt a mode of life hostile to your tastes; you sufficiently discharge the duties of wealth if the fair proportion of your income go to objects of well-considered benevolence and purposes not unproductive to the community. Nor can I think that I, who possess but a very moderate fortune, am morally called upon to strive for its increase in the many good speculations which life in a capital may offer to an eager mind, provided always that I do nevertheless remember that I have children, to whose future provision and wellbeing some modest augmentations of my fortune would be desirable. In improving my land for their benefit, I may say also that I add, however trivially, to the wealth of the country. Let me hope that the trite saying is true, that ‘he who makes two blades of corn grow where one grew before,’ is a benefactor to his race. So with mental wealth: surely it is permitted to us to invest and expend it within that sphere most suited to those idiosyncrasies, the adherence to which constitutes our moral health. I do not, with the philosopher, condemn the man who, irresistibly impelled towards the pursuit of honours and power, persuades himself that he is toiling for the public good when he is but gratifying his personal ambition;—probably he is a better man thus acting in conformity with his own nature, than he would be if placed beyond all temptation in Plato’s cave. Nor, on the other hand, can I think that a man of the highest faculties and the largest attainments, who has arrived at a sincere disdain of power or honours, would be a better man if he were tyrannically forced to pursue the objects from which his temperament recoils, upon the plea that he was thus promoting the public welfare. No doubt, in every city, town, street, and lane, there are bustling, officious, restless persons, who thrust themselves into public concerns, with a loud declaration that they are animated only by the desire of public good; they mistake their fidgetiness for philanthropy. Not a bubble company can be started, but what it is with a programme that its direct object is the public benefit, and the ten per cent promised to the shareholders is but a secondary consideration. Who believes in the sincerity of that announcement? In fine, according both to religion and to philosophy, virtue is the highest end of man’s endeavour; but virtue is wholly independent of the popular shout or the lictor’s fasces. Virtue is the same, whether with or without the laurel crown or the curule chair. Honours do not sully it, but obscurity does not degrade. He who is