Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good thing because it can be transformed into many other things. It gives the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness. Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too, even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure, when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many, perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb, 'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good--but to buy time--in other words, life!'