I used to believe a great deal more in opportunities and less in application than I do now. Time and health are needed, but with these there are always opportunities. Rich people have a fancy for spending money very uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as accessible as daylight. I have a rich friend who travels more, and buys more costly things, than I do, but he does not really learn more or advance farther in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully occupied, what has he to set against them? only other well-occupied days, no more. If he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg he is missing the benefit I am getting round my house, and in it. The sum of the year's benefit seems to be surprisingly alike in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of thoroughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well occupied as you--he is certainly not better occupied. When I open a noble volume I say to myself, "Now the only Croesus that I envy is he who is reading a better book than this." FOOTNOTES: [4] This sounds like a poetical exaggeration, but it is less than the bare truth. There were fifteen hundred slaves on two West Indian estates that Beckford lost in a lawsuit. It is quite certain, considering his lavish expenditure, that fully a thousand men must have worked for the maintenance of his luxury in Europe. So much for his command of labor. [5] The reader will please to bear in mind that I am speaking here of broad effects on great numbers. I do not think that aristocracy, in its spirit, is quite favorable to the exceptionally highest intellectual life. PART VI. CUSTOM AND TRADITION. LETTER I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FIRMLY RESOLVED NEVER TO WEAR ANYTHING BUT A GRAY COAT.[6] Secret enjoyment of rebellion against custom, and of the disabilities resulting from it--Penalties imposed by Society and by Nature out of proportion to the offence--Instances--What we consider penalties not really penalties, but only consequences--Society likes harmony, and is offended by dissonance--Utility of rebels against custom--That they ought to reserve their power of rebellion for great occasions--Uses of custom--Duty of the intellectual class--Best way to procure the abolition of a custom we disapprove--Bad customs--Eccentricity sometimes a duty.