In the wealthiest class the house is perfectly managed. It seems to run like the fabled machine of perpetual motion. There is no sign of the driving-power, no racket, no effort. Breakfast is a meal of charming informality, which, I think, illustrates best the domestic ideals of the Englishman. Self-help from amply furnished sideboards and from tea and coffee urns is the rule. There is no fixed moment for coming to breakfast, and, since you help yourself, no servants need to be in attendance. How pleasantly thought-out is this idea! You have not the urging to an inconvenient punctuality of the thought that you are keeping servants waiting. Dinner is a ceremony of ritual. It is the social crown of the day. You are expected to treat it with the considerateness due to its importance. To be asked to dinner is the sign of the Englishman's complete acceptance of you as a desirable person. (He may ask you to lunch without admitting quite as much.) To be asked, casually, "to eat with us" at dinner time shows a degree of friendliness which is willing to allow some familiarity. It is because the luxury of upper-class life in England is so suave and so refined that it does not challenge antagonism as does the arrogant wealth of other lands. An English manor house, such as Stoke Court--once upon a time the house of the poet Grey--is, from its beautiful surroundings to the last detail of a curtain, as fine a product as civilisation can show. And the Englishman's home is for himself, his friends, and, in so far as it can claim to be of any public interest, for the enjoyment also of the mass of his fellow-countrymen. The casual traveller through London may, on several days of the year, see a great crowd of omnibuses and drags outside Buckingham Palace, and learn that the grounds of the King's palace had been that day thrown open to the public. To a large extent the royal palaces thus welcome the people as guests; and the great houses of the nobility, which have fine collections of paintings, are in very many cases treated as semi-public institutions. This shows a fine public spirit and feeling of common patriotism between classes. The middle class fashions itself, as closely as it can, on the upper class. Its home is often as admirably managed, though on a smaller scale. Its observance of etiquette is more rigid, especially in the "lower middle class." Smooth home-management is the Englishman's (or the Englishwoman's) gift. The domestic economy of the country cottager seems generally good, but the city worker often makes the mistake of trying to ape the standards of richer people, sacrificing a good deal of material comfort to have, for instance, his "drawing-room" or parlour. But on the whole the Englishman's home proves as high a standard of taste and good feeling as the twentieth century can offer. It is a fine reward for the work-doer, a fine fortress from which to issue forth to work. Let us now see England at play.