If he falls under the dominion of these, or even of one of
them, he almost infallibly wrecks either his fortune or his
constitution, or both. It is perfectly useless to set before him high
motives or ideals, or to incite him to lines of life for which he has no
aptitude and which can give him no pleasure. What, then, can save him?
Most frequently a happy marriage; but even if he is fortunate enough to
attain this, it will probably only be after several years, and in those
years a fatal bias is likely to be given to his life which can never be
recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love
of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an
interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly
noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not
injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no
small gain if, in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take
the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have
described, usually mean pleasures of vice.

Nor is it by any means only in such cases that field sports prove a
great moral safety-valve, scattering morbid tastes and giving harmless
and healthy vent to turns of character or feeling which might very
easily be converted into vice. Among the influences that form the
character of the upper classes of Englishmen they have a great part,
and in spite of the exaggerations and extravagances that often accompany
them, few good observers will doubt that they have an influence for
good. However much of the Philistine element there may be in the upper
classes in England, however manifest may be their limitations and their
defects, there can be little doubt that on the whole the conditions of
English life have in this sphere proved successful. There are few better
working types within the reach of commonplace men than that of an
English gentleman with his conventional tastes, standard of honour,
religion, sympathies, ideals, opinions and instincts. He is not likely
to be either a saint or a philosopher, but he is tolerably sure to be
both an honourable and a useful man, with a fair measure of good sense
and moderation, and with some disposition towards public duties. A crowd
of out-of-door amusements and interests do much to dispel his peccant
humours and to save him from the stagnation and the sensuality that have
beset many foreign aristocracies. County business stimula