he finds no lack of individuals who are willing to
take shares in any trading concern in which money in sufficient
quantities may be made. The person who will not speak to an English
farmer except as to an inferior, sends his own sons to the Colonies or
to the United States to farm. These things, however, are, to Englishmen,
mere platitudes. But though all are familiar with the change which is
passing over the British people, few Englishmen, perhaps, have realised
how rapidly the peerage itself is coming to be a trade-representing
body. Of seventeen peers of recent creation, taken at random, nine owe
their money and peerages to business, and the present holders of the
title were themselves brought up to a business career. It may not be
long before the English aristocracy will be as universally occupied in
business as is the American; and it will be as natural for an Earl to go
to his office as it is for the American millionaire (perhaps the father
of the Countess) to do so to-day.

In spite of all the change that has taken place, however, it still
remains very difficult for the English gentleman, or member of a gentle
family, to engage actively in business--certainly in trade--without
being made to feel that he is stepping down into a lower sphere where
there is a new and vitiated atmosphere. The code of ethics, he
understands, is not that to which he is accustomed at his club and in
his country house. He trusts that it will not be necessary to forget
that he himself is a gentleman, but at least he will have to remember
that his associates are only business men.

The American aristocrat, on the other hand, takes to business as being
the most attractive and honourable career. Setting aside all question of
money-making, he believes it to be (and his father tells him that it is)
the best life for him. Idleness is not good for any man. He will enjoy
his annual month or two of shooting or fishing or yachting all the
better for having spent the last ten or eleven months in hard work.
Moreover, immersion in affairs will keep him active and alert and in
touch with his fellow-men, besides being in itself one of the largest
and most fascinating of pastimes. There is also the money; but when
business is put on this level, money has a tendency to become only one
among many objects. In England no man can with any grace pretend that he
goes into business for any other reason than to make money. In America a
man goes into it in order