like a
tiny star.

If wealth had only pleasure to offer as a temptation from intellectual
labor, its influence would be easier to resist. Men of the English race
are often grandly strong in resistance to every form of voluptuousness;
the race is fond of comfort and convenience, but it does not sacrifice
its energy to enervating self-indulgence. There is, however, another
order of temptations in great wealth, to which Englishmen not only
yield, but yield with a satisfied conscience, even with a sense of
obedience to duty. Wealth carries pleasure in her left hand, but in her
right she bears honor and power. The rich man feels that he can do so
much by the mere exercise of his command over the labor of others, and
so little by any unaided labor of his own, that he is always strongly
tempted to become, not only physically but intellectually, a director of
work rather that a workman. Even his modesty, when he is modest, tends
to foster his reliance on others rather than himself. All that he tries
to do is done so much better by those who make it their profession, that
he is always tempted to fall back upon his paying power as his most
satisfactory and effective force. There are cases in which this
temptation is gloriously overcome, where men of great wealth compel
every one to acknowledge that their money is nothing more than a help to
their higher life, like the charger that bore Wellington at Waterloo,
serving him indeed usefully, but not detracting from the honor which is
his due. But in these cases the life is usually active or administrative
rather than intellectual. The rich man does not generally feel tempted
to enter upon careers in which his command over labor is not an evident
advantage, and this because men naturally seek those fields in which
_all_ their superiorities tell. Even the well known instance of Lord
Rosse can scarcely be considered an exception to this rule, for although
he was eminent in a science which has been followed by poor men with
great distinction, his wealth was of use in the construction of his
colossal telescope, which gave him a clear advantage over merely
professional contemporaries.

Besides this natural desire to pursue careers in which their money may
lessen the number of competitors, the rich are often diverted from
purely intellectual pursuits by the social duties of their station,
duties which it is impossible to avoid and difficult to keep within
limits. The Duchess of Orleans (m