so that really, in those days, no one could be described as
purse proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct than
the honour which those curious Greek people pay to their conceited poor,
is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so that
one cannot listen long either to them, or to the Roman writers who
imitated them, without finding oneself entangled in all sorts of
plausible absurdities; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness of
collecting that heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and led
generally to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy.

3. Nor are matters much better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks and
Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and
constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, in
which the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and
rich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and
lamentable crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, and
searching, sometimes in vain, for the last coin out of all their
treasures that could ever be of use to them.

4. But these Pagan views of the matter were indulgent, compared with
those which were held in the Middle Ages, when wealth seems to have been
looked upon by the best men not only as contemptible, but as criminal.
The purse round the neck is, then, one of the principal signs of
condemnation in the pictured Inferno; and the Spirit of Poverty is
reverenced with subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, like
that of a loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen.
And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of these
feelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which,
nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is simply one of
the greatest powers which can be entrusted to human hands: a power, not
indeed to be envied, because it seldom makes us happy; but still less to
be abdicated or despised; while, in these days, and in this country, it
has become a power all the more notable, in that the possessions of a
rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or
coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whose
bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercises
harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mammon
either of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness.

5. Now, it seeme