other of the present Count of Paris)
arranged her time with the greatest care so as to reserve a little of it
for her own culture in uninterrupted solitude. By an exact system, and
the exercise of the rarest firmness, she contrived to steal half an hour
here and an hour there--enough no doubt, when employed as she employed
them, to maintain her character as a very distinguished lady, yet still
far from sufficient for the satisfactory pursuit of any great art or
science. If it be difficult for the rich man to enter into the kingdom
of heaven, it is also difficult for him to secure that freedom from
interruption which is necessary to fit him for his entrance into the
Intellectual Kingdom. He can scarcely allow himself to be absorbed in
any great study, when he reflects on all the powerful means of social
influence which he is suffering to lie idle. He is sure to possess by
inheritance, or to have acquired in obedience to custom, a complicated
and expensive machinery for the pleasures and purposes of society. There
is game to be shot; there are hunters to be exercised; great houses to
be filled with guests. So much is expected of the rich man, both in
business and in pleasure, that his time is not his own, and he could not
quit his station if he would. And yet the Intellectual Life, in its
fruitful perfection, requires, I do not say the complete abandonment of
the world, but it assuredly requires free and frequent spaces of labor
in tranquil solitude, "retreats" like those commanded by the Church of
Rome, but with more of study and less of contemplation.

It would be useless to ask you to abdicate your power, and retreat into
some hermitage with a library and a laboratory, without a thought of
returning to your pleasant hall in Yorkshire and your house in Mayfair.
You will not sell all and follow the Light, but there is a life which
you may powerfully encourage, yet only partially share. Notwithstanding
the increased facilities for earning a living which this age offers to
the intellectual, the time that they are often compelled to give to the
satisfaction of common material necessities is so much time withdrawn
from the work which they alone can do. It is a lamentable waste of the
highest and rarest kind of energy to compel minds that are capable of
original investigation, of discovery, to occupy themselves in that mere
vulgarization of knowledge, in popular lecturing and literature, which
could be done just as efficiently