ime to a study so unprofitable. Still, in a way, he is proud of
the sinologue--as a public school is proud of a boy so clever as to
verge upon insanity, or a village is proud of the village idiot.
Something of the same feeling, I sometimes think, underlies his respect
for Shakspere. "If you want that kind of thing," he seems to say to the
foreigner, "and it's the kind of thing you _would_ want, _we_ can do it,
you see, better than you can!"

So with art. He is never a connoisseur, but he is often a collector.
Partly, no doubt, because there is money in it, but that is a secondary
consideration. Mainly because collecting and collectors appeal to his
sporting instinct. His knowledge about his collection will be precise
and definite, whether it be postage stamps or pictures. He will know all
about it, except its aesthetic value. That he cannot know, for he cannot
see it. He has the _flair_ of the dealer, not the perception of the
amateur. And he does not know or believe that there is any distinction
between them.

But these, from his point of view, are trifles. What matters is that he
has pre-eminently the virtues of active life. He is fair-minded, and
this, oddly, in spite of his difficulty in seeing another man's point of
view. When he _does_ see it he respects it. Whereas nimbler-witted
nations see it only to circumvent and cheat it. He is honest; as honest,
at least, as the conditions of modern business permit. He hates bad
work, even when, for the moment, bad work pays. He hates skimping and
paring. And these qualities of his make it hard for him to compete with
rivals less scrupulous and less generous. He is kind-hearted--much more
so than he cares to admit. And at the bottom of all his qualities he has
the sense of duty. He will shoulder loyally all the obligations he has
undertaken to his country, to his family, to his employer, to his
employees. The sense of duty, indeed, one might say with truth, is his
religion. For on the rare occasions on which he can be persuaded to
broach such themes you will find, I think, at the bottom of his mind
that what he believes in is Something, somehow, somewhere, in the
universe, which helps him, and which he is helping, when he does right.
There must, he feels, be some sense in life. And what sense would there
be if duty were nonsense?

Poets, artists, philosophers can never be at home with the Englishman.
His qualities and his defects alike are alien to them. In his company
t