class
are most frequently made at present are most frequently made at present
are schools, libraries, hospitals, and asylums for the infirm or
unfortunate. The avowed purpose of the donor in these cases is the
amelioration of human life in the particular respect which is named
in the bequest; but it will be found an invariable rule that in
the execution of the work not a little of other motives, frequency
incompatible with the initial motive, is present and determines the
particular disposition eventually made of a good share of the means
which have been set apart by the bequest. Certain funds, for instance,
may have been set apart as a foundation for a foundling asylum or a
retreat for invalids. The diversion of expenditure to honorific waste in
such cases is not uncommon enough to cause surprise or even to raise a
smile. An appreciable share of the funds is spent in the construction
of an edifice faced with some aesthetically objectionable but expensive
stone, covered with grotesque and incongruous details, and designed, in
its battlemented walls and turrets and its massive portals and strategic
approaches, to suggest certain barbaric methods of warfare. The interior
of the structure shows the same pervasive guidance of the canons of
conspicuous waste and predatory exploit. The windows, for instance,
to go no farther into detail, are placed with a view to impress their
pecuniary excellence upon the chance beholder from the outside, rather
than with a view to effectiveness for their ostensible end in the
convenience or comfort of the beneficiaries within; and the detail of
interior arrangement is required to conform itself as best it may to
this alien but imperious requirement of pecuniary beauty.

In all this, of course, it is not to be presumed that the donor would
have found fault, or that he would have done otherwise if he had taken
control in person; it appears that in those cases where such a personal
direction is exercised--where the enterprise is conducted by direct
expenditure and superintendence instead of by bequest--the aims and
methods of management are not different in this respect. Nor would the
beneficiaries, or the outside observers whose ease or vanity are not
immediately touched, be pleased with a different disposition of the
funds. It would suit no one to have the enterprise conducted with a view
directly to the most economical and effective use of the means at hand
for the initial, material end of