tion.

But fashion and wealth are two very solemn realities, which the
frivolous class of moralists have talked a great deal of silly stuff
about. Fashion is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms and
social intercourse. What business has a man who knows nothing about the
beautiful, and cannot pronounce the word view, to talk about fashion to
a set of people who, if one of the quality left a card at their doors,
would contrive to keep it on the very top of their heap of the names
of their two-story acquaintances, till it was as yellow as the Codex
Vaticanus?

Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish
trivialities about it! Take the single fact of its alleged uncertain
tenure and transitory character. In old times, when men were all the
time fighting and robbing each other,--in those tropical countries where
the Sabeans and the Chaldeans stole all a man's cattle and camels, and
there were frightful tornadoes and rains of fire from heaven, it was
true enough that riches took wings to themselves not unfrequently in a
very unexpected way. But, with common prudence in investments, it is
not so now. In fact, there is nothing earthly that lasts so well, on the
whole, as money. A man's learning dies with him; even his virtues fade
out of remembrance, but the dividends on the stocks he bequeaths to his
children live and keep his memory green.

I do not think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance
to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional
trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to
feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of
that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous
power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one,
nor the meanness which often degrades the other.

A remark which seems to contradict a universally current opinion is not
generally to be taken "neat," but watered with the ideas of common-sense
and commonplace people. So, if any of my young friends should be tempted
to waste their substance on white kids and "all-rounds," or to insist on
becoming millionaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give them
references to some of the class referred to, well known to the public as
providers of literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that
there is not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with perfect
impunity.

I am afraid