The distinction of a true aristocracy is that it is _not_ a plutocracy, but a noble caste, including poor members as well as rich, and having certain ideals which, however foreign they may be to the spirit of the present age, did certainly, in their own time, tend to lift men and women above vulgarity. The most ennobling of those ideals was the notion that money was not the highest object of pursuit. The poor gentleman could be contented with ill-paid service in the army or the Church, because he did not serve for money; and it was believed within the caste, rightly or wrongly, that to labour for pecuniary rewards as the main object had a degrading effect upon the mind. The army was a chosen profession, because it was the school of courage, obedience, and self-sacrifice; the Church, because it was the school of piety and morality, as well as the home of learning. I know that I am describing a narrow ideal, but most ideals that have had any power in the world have been narrow, and I am anxious to show how in the old aristocratic prejudices there were elements of real nobleness, which may have given them dignity and vitality. Those prejudices were hostile to some things that we now value. They were hostile, for example, to the pursuit of the fine arts, but it was from an apprehension, which I now see to have been only too well founded, that in struggling for the acquirement of brilliant manual skill, the student might spend his efforts on a low object. Those prejudices looked doubtfully upon commerce; it was thought that a gentleman did better not to go into trade; but the reason was because a heavy business ties a man down so much, and leaves him so little leisure for study or society, so little liberty for travel, that it is really somewhat of a misfortune to be fastened to such a business during the best years of youth and manhood. This aristocracy was selfish, but its selfishness was of a high kind. It was not given up either to avarice or to self-indulgence, but it valued what is best in life. [Sidenote: Mr. Bagehot’s Defence of Titles.] The reader may remember how Mr. Bagehot defended titles on the ground that they counterbalanced in some degree the power of wealth by setting up something else to be respected, and he even argued that title was a roundabout means of making intelligence respected:-- [Sidenote: Nobility the Symbol of Mind.]