ing it. But, if the last speaker will permit me to take my
text from him, I would ask him, is it not a curiously indiscriminate
procedure to affirm indifferently value in all life? A poet
surely--and Coryat's practice, if he will allow me to say so, is
sounder than his theory--a poet seeks to render, wherever he can find
it, the exquisite, the choice, the distinguished and the rare. Not
life, but beauty is his quest. He does not reproduce Nature, he
imposes upon her a standard. And so it is with every art, including
the art of life itself. Life as such is neither good nor bad, and,
Audubon's undistinguishing censure is surely as much out of place as
Coryat's undistinguishing approval. Life is raw material for the
artist, whether he be the private man carrying out his own destiny, or
the statesman shaping that of a nation. The end of the artist in
either case is the good life; and on his own conception of that will
depend the value of his work.

"I recall to your minds these obvious facts, at the risk of being
tedious, because to-night, seeing the turn that our discussion has
taken, we must regard ourselves as statesmen, or as would-be statesmen.
And I, in that capacity, finding myself in disagreement with everybody,
except perhaps Cantilupe, and asking myself the reason why, can only
conclude that I have a different notion of the end to be pursued, and
of the means whereby it can be attained. All of you, I think, except
Cantilupe, have assumed that the good life, whatever it may be, can be
attained by everybody; and that society should be arranged so as to
secure that result. That is, in fact, the democratic postulate, which
is now so generally accepted not only in this company but in the world
at large. But it is that postulate that I dispute. I hold that the
good life must either be the privilege of a few, or not exist at all.
The good life in my view, is the life of a gentleman. That word, I
know, has been degraded; and there is no more ominous sign of the
degradation of the English people. But I use it in its true and noble
sense. I mean by a gentleman a man of responsibility; one who because
he enjoys privileges recognizes duties; a landed proprietor who is
also, and therefore, a soldier and a statesman; a man with a natural
capacity and a hereditary tradition to rule; a member, in a word, of a
governing aristocracy. Not that the good life consists in governing;
but only a governing class and those