essentially a question of degree and of actual possibilities, I can only suggest in general that a man is _primâ facie_ justified in all such expenditure as tends to the highest possible cultivation of his faculties and of the faculties of those dependent upon him. I hold it to be a matter of the highest importance that there should be a thoroughly civilised class--a class capable of all intellectual pleasures; loving the beauties of art and nature; studying every possible department of knowledge, scientific and historical; maintaining all such modes of recreation and social enjoyment as are naturally appropriate to such a class. And I do not call any man luxurious for maintaining his position in such a sphere, or for enabling his children to follow in his steps. I believe that, as things are, the existence of such a class is a necessary condition of national welfare and of the preservation and extension of the whole body of cultivation which we have received from our ancestors. What is requisite is, that the class should be not only capable of refined enjoyment, but of discharging its functions relatively to the nation at large, and spreading a higher standard of enjoyment through the whole community. So far as the richer class maintains certain traditions, moral and intellectual--traditions of personal honour and public spirit, of artistic and literary cultivation--it may be discharging an invaluable function, and its existence may be a necessary means of diffusing a higher civilisation through the masses who have not the same advantage. Whatever employments of wealth contribute to make a man more efficient as an individual member of society, to strengthen his understanding and his perceptions, to widen his intellectual horizon and interest his sympathies, and the enjoyments which correspond to them, are not to be condemned as luxurious. They are, at present, only within the reach of the richer classes, ardently as we may hope that the power of partaking them may be extended as rapidly and widely as possible. But the growth of luxury, in the bad sense, is the indication that the class which should act as the brain of the social organism is ceasing to discharge its functions, and becoming what we call a survival. It is a kind of moral gout--an aristocratic disease, showing that the secretions are becoming disordered for want of a proper application of the energies. It was in that sense, as I said before, that our grandfathers denounced the luxury which proved that the ruling classes, especially in France, had retained their privileges while abandoning the corresponding duties. If in England we escaped so violent a catastrophe, it was because, with all their luxuries and levities and shortsightedness, the aristocratic classes were still playing an active part, and, if not governing well, doing whatever was done in the way of governing. But every class, and every member of a class, should always remember that he may be asked