xpenditure for the others emulatively to work up to as near
as may be. It is scarcely conceivable that this could have been done in
a more unobtrusively efficient manner, or with a more austerely virtuous
conviction of well-doing, than by the gentlefolk bred of the Victorian
peace. So also, in turn, it is not to be believed that the prospective
breed of gentlefolk derivable from the net product of the pacific
nations under the promised regime of peace at large will prove in any
degree less effective for the like ends. More will be required of them
in the way of a traceless consumption of superfluities and an unexampled
expensive standard of living. But this situation that so faces them may
be construed as a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficult
task.

A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value of a leisure
class in modern life would scarcely be in place here; and it has also
been set out in some detail elsewhere.[10] For the purpose in hand it
may be sufficient to recall that the canons of taste and the standards
of valuation worked out and inculcated by leisure-class life have in all
ages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personal
futility. In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediate
bearing on the material well-being of the community at large, the
leadership of the leisure class can scarcely be called by a less
derogatory epithet than "untoward." But that is not the whole of the
case, and the other side should be heard. The leisure-class life of
tranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of which
the material of their sustenance is derived, enables a growth of all
those virtues that mark, or make, the gentleman; and that affect the
life of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, by imitation;
leading to a standardisation of the everyday proprieties on a
presumably, higher level of urbanity and integrity than might be
expected to result in the absence of this prescriptive model.

[Footnote 10: Cf. _The Theory of the Leisure Class_, especially ch.
v.-ix. and xiv.]

_Integer vitae scelerisque purus_, the gentleman of assured station
turns a placid countenance to all those petty vexations of breadwinning
that touch him not. Serenely and with an impassive fortitude he faces
those common vicissitudes of life that are impotent to make or mar his
material fortunes and that can neither impair his creature comforts nor
put a slur