to Boanerges. Their earnestness (which is reserved for this
enthralling topic) is quite appalling. In their elders one has long
been accustomed to it, but these young people should really know
better. The interest excited in society by 'scratchings' has never
been equalled since the time of the Cock Lane ghost. If men would
only 'lose their money and look pleasant' without talking about it,
I shouldn't mind; but they _will_ make it a subject of
conversation, as though everyone who liked his glass of wine should
converse upon 'the vintages.' One looks for it in business people
and forgives it; but everyone is now for business.

The reverence that used to belong to Death is now only paid to it
in the case of immensely rich persons, whose wealth is spoken of
with bated breath. 'He died, sir, worth two millions; a very warm
man.' If you happen to say, though with all reasonable probability
and even with Holy Writ to back you, 'He is probably warmer by this
time,' you are looked upon as a Communist. What the man was is
nothing, what he made is everything. It is the gold alone that we
now value: the temple that might have sanctified the gold is of no
account. This worship of mere wealth has, it is true, this
advantage over the old adoration of birth, that something may
possibly be got out of it; to cringe and fawn upon the people that
have blue blood is manifestly futile, since the peculiarity is not
communicable, but it is hoped that, by being shaken up in the same
social bag with millionaires, something may be attained by what is
technically called the 'sweating' process. So far as I have
observed, however, the results are small, while the operation is to
the last degree disagreeable.

What is very significant of this new sort of golden age is that a