becoming Virtue, which as a learned writer says, “doth sit on a wise man more becomingly than royal robes on a king.” Many who entertain this view are prepared to unite their forces in making well-born and well-bred Poverty the fashion. For in such a scheme, singular as it may appear, there is just a faint chance of putting up a barrier against boorish Plutocracy (which is a more unwieldy and offensive power than Democracy), and also of asserting the existence of grander national qualities than greed, avarice, and self-indulgence, which humours, if allowed to generate and grow in the minds of a people, result in the ravaging sickness of such a pestilence of evil as cannot be easily stayed or remedied. There has been enough, and too much of the Idolatry of Money-bags--it is time the fever of such insanity should abate and cool down. To conclude with another admirable quotation from Mr. Lecky: “Of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces of the human mind--the works of human genius that through the long course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and direct the lives of men, might all be purchased--I do not say by the cost of a lady’s necklace, but by that of one or two of the little stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charms of conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be often seen around the millionaire’s dinner table, and we may gain a good lesson of the vanity of riches.” And, we may add, of the vulgarity of those who advertise their wealth by ostentation, as well as of those who honour Purses more than Principles. AMERICAN WOMEN IN ENGLAND