ic service are very great, this is
less common. In both countries the number of men with immense fortunes,
absolutely at their own disposal, has enormously increased, and the
character of their expenditure has become a matter of real national
importance.

Much of it, no doubt, goes in simple luxury and ostentation, or in mere
speculation, or in restoring old and dilapidated fortunes through the
marriages of rank with money which are so characteristic of our time;
but much also is devoted to charitable or philanthropic purposes. In
this, as in most things, motives are often very blended. To men of such
fortunes, such expenditure, even on a large scale, means no real
self-sacrifice, and the inducements to it are not always of the highest
kind. To some men it is a matter of ambition--a legitimate and useful
ambition--to obtain the enduring and honourable fame which attaches to
the founder of a great philanthropic or educational establishment.
Others find that, in England at least, large philanthropic expenditure
is one of the easiest and shortest paths to social success, bringing men
and women of low extraction and bad manners into close and frequent
connection with the recognised leaders of society; while others again
have discovered that it is the quickest way of effacing the stigma which
still in some degree attaches to wealth which has been acquired by
dishonourable or dubious means. Fashion, social ambition, and social
rivalries are by no means unknown in the fields of charity. There are
many, however, in whose philanthropy the element of self has no place,
and whose sole desire is to expend their money in forms that can be of
most real and permanent benefit to others.

Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is
wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already
indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or
two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a
general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by
strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather
than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but
certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of
money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions
intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just
referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be i