as, of
course, nothing to say with respect to the conventionally distinct lines
of descent of the "Best Families." These Best Families are nowise
distinguishable from the common run in point of hereditary traits; the
difference that makes the gentleman and the gentlewoman being wholly a
matter of habituation during the individual's life-time. It is something
of a distasteful necessity to call attention to this total absence of
native difference between the well-born and the common, but it is a
necessity of the argument in hand, and the recalling of it may,
therefore, be overlooked for once in a way. There is no harm and no
annoyance intended. The point of it all is that, on the premises which
this state of the case affords, the body of gentlefolk created by such
an accumulation of invested wealth will have no less of an effectual
cultural value than they would have had if their virtually ancient
pedigree had been actual.

At this point, again, the experience of the Victorian peace and the
functioning of its gentlefolk come in to indicate what may fairly be
hoped for in this way under this prospective regime of peace at large.
But with the difference that the scale of things is to be larger, the
pace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this prospective leisure
class somewhat wider. The work of this leisure class--and there is
neither paradox nor inconsistency in the phrase--should be patterned on
the lines worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but with
some appreciable accentuation in the direction of what chiefly
characterised the leisure class of that era of tranquility. The
characteristic feature to which attention naturally turns at this
suggestion is the tranquility that has marked that body of gentlefolk
and their code of clean and honest living. Another word than
"tranquility" might be hit upon to designate this characteristic animus,
but any other word that should at all adequately serve the turn would
carry a less felicitous suggestion of those upper-class virtues that
have constituted the substantial worth of the Victorian gentleman. The
conscious worth of these gentlefolk has been a beautifully complete
achievement. It has been an achievement of "faith without works," of
course; but, needless to say, that is as it should be, also of course.
The place of gentlefolk in the economy of Nature is tracelessly to
consume the community's net product, and in doing so to set a standard
of decent e