So the Old South had its aristocracy, whose leaders laughed at the doctrine of equality as proclaimed by sentimentalists at home and abroad. This Old South aristocracy was of threefold structure—it was an aristocracy of wealth, of blood, and of honor. It was not the wealth of the shoddy aristocracy that here and there, even in the New South, has forced itself into notice and vulgarly flaunts its acquisitions. It came by inheritance of generations chiefly, as with the nobility of England and France. Only in the aristocracy of the Old World could there be found a counterpart to the luxury, the ease and grace of inherited wealth, which characterized the ruling class of the Old South. There were no gigantic fortunes as now, and wealth was not increased or diminished by our latter-day methods of speculation or prodigal and nauseating display. The ownership of a broad plantation, stately country and city homes, of hundreds of slaves, of accumulations of money and bonds, passed from father to children for successive generations. Whatever cohesiveness the law could afford bound such great estates together, so that prodigality or change could least affect them. Here and there mansions of the old order of Southern aristocracy are standing in picturesque and melancholy ruin, as reminders of the splendor and luxury of the ante-bellum planter. A few months ago I looked upon the partly dismantled columns of a once noble home of the Old South, about which there clustered thickly the memories of a great name and family which for generations had received the homage of the South. As a child I had seen the spacious mansion in the day of its pride, as the Mecca of political leaders who came to counsel with its princely owner, or as the center of a hospitality that never intermitted until the end of wealth came with the desolations of war. The glass of fashion and the mold of form made it famous as a social magnet. In those old days, its beautifully kept lawns, its ample shrubbery, its primeval park of giant oaks, its bewildering garden of flowers, its great orchards, its long rows of whitewashed negro cabins, its stables and flashing equipages and blooded horses and dogs, the army of darkies in its fields, the native melody of their songs rising and falling in the distance, the grinding of cane or ginning of cotton, the soft-shod corps of trained servants about the mansion, the mingling of bright colors of innumerable visitors, the brilliancy of cut glass and silver, the lavishness of everything that could tempt the eye or palate—was like a picture from the scenes of Old-World splendor rather than of a young Western republic. As I looked and brooded over this ruin of a long-famous home, its glory all gone, its light and laughter dim and silent, I paid tribute to an aristocracy of wealth, pleasure-loving indeed, with the inherent weaknesses of transmitted estate, but one which, having freely received, freely gave of its abundance in a