Wealth is not only more necessary in England than in France, it is also more valuable socially; it does more to elevate its possessor, to give him rank and station. In England the condition of things is, for the present, singularly agreeable to the rich man who is also ambitious. It is not like a country without an upper class, and it is not like a country with a closed and exclusive upper class. England has a brilliant and attractive upper class that the rich man may aspire to enter, and which receives him with encouraging cordiality. He has something to desire, which is at the same time well worth desiring and not beyond his reach. A true aristocracy would keep him at a distance; in a genuine democracy he could never become more than a wealthy citizen; in the present very peculiar condition of English society there is still an aristocracy for him to enter, and it receives him to be one of its own. [Sidenote: The Middle Classes and the Rich.] He has the advantage, also, of living in a country where the middle classes are proud of the wealth of the rich. They talk of the large incomes of the nobility with an interest that may be a survival of ancient feudal sentiments, a vassal’s pride in his liege lord. It is a pleasure to them to think that the Duke of Westminster can drive out with his guests from Eaton Hall in a procession of his own carriages. Even the freaks of the last Duke of Portland are not displeasing to them, because his mole-burrowing was done on such a costly scale. The vast estates of Sutherland and Breadalbane seem to give every Scotchman a superiority over the comparatively landless French _noblesse_. The British nature is so inclined to be happy in wealth that when the individual Briton has little of his own to rejoice in he generously takes pleasure in that of the nearest lord. This pleasure is the more pure for him that he is almost incapable of envy.[74] [Sidenote: French Feeling about Riches.] [Sidenote: Separableness of Rank and Wealth in France.]