nature costs humanity nothing, whereas the gourmand devours the labour of the French cook and probably that of a good many assistants and purveyors. The greatest service is obviously rendered by any one who can improve human food. "The man is what he eats," is a truth though somewhat too broadly stated. But then the improvement must be one ultimately if not immediately accessible to mankind in general. That which requires a French cook is accessible only to a few. Again, in setting forth the civilizing effects of expenditure, Mr. Greg, I think, rather leaves out of sight those of frugality. The Florentines, certainly the leaders of civilization in their day, were frugal in their personal habits, and by that frugality accumulated the public wealth which produced Florentine art, and sustained a national policy eminently generous and beneficent for its time. Moreover, in estimating the general influence of great fortunes, Mr. Greg seems to take a rather sanguine view of the probable character and conduct of their possessors. He admits that a broad-acred peer or opulent commoner "may spend his L30,000 a year in such a manner as to be a curse, a reproach, and an object of contempt to the community, demoralizing and disgusting all around him, doing no good to others, and bringing no real enjoyment to himself." But he appears to think that the normal case, and the one which should govern our general views and policy upon the subject, is that of a man "of refined taste and intellect expanded to the requirements of his position, managing his property with care and judgment, so as to set a feasible example to less wealthy neighbours; prompt to discern and to aid useful undertakings, to succour striving merit, unearned suffering, and overmatched energy." "Such a man," he says, in a concluding burst of eloquence, "if his establishment in horses and servants is not immoderate, although he surrounds himself with all that art can offer to render life beautiful and elegant though he gathers round him the best productions of the intellect of all countries and ages, though his gardens and his park are models of curiosity and beauty, though he lets his ancestral trees rot in their picturesque mutility instead of converting them into profitable timber, and disregards the fact that his park would be more productive if cut up into potato plots though, in fine he lives in the very height of elegant, refined and tasteful luxury--I should hesitate to denounce as consuming on himself the incomes of countless labouring families, and I should imagine that he might lead his life of temperate and thoughtful joy quietly conscious that his liberal expenditure enabled scores of these families as well as artists and others to exist in comfort and without either brain or heart giving way under the burdensome reflection."