severest critics, however, do concede that he is candid and outspoken, and
many admit that his social strategy is widely practised even in these
days.

But the aims of the world in which he moved were routed by the onrush of
the ideals of democratic equality, fraternity, and liberty. With the
prosperity of the newer shibboleths, the old-time notion of aristocracy,
gentility, and high breeding became more and more a curio to be framed
suitably in gold and kept in the glass case of an art museum. The crashing
advance of the industrial age of gold thrust all courts and their sinuous
graces aside for the unmistakable ledger balance of the counting-house.
This new order of things had been a long time in process, when, in the
first year of this century, a distinguished English social historian, the
late The Right Honorable G.W.E. Russell, wrote: "Probably in all ages of
history men have liked money, but a hundred years ago they did not talk
about it in society.... Birth, breeding, rank, accomplishments, eminence
in literature, eminence in art, eminence in public service--all these
things still count for something in society. But when combined they are
only as the dust of the balance when weighed against the all-prevalent
power of money. The worship of the Golden Calf is the characteristic cult
of modern society." In the Elizabethan Age of mighty glory, three hundred
years before this was said, Ben Jonson had railed against money as "a thin
membrane of honor," groaning: "How hath all true reputation fallen since
money began to have any!" Now the very fact that the debasing effect of
money on the social organism has been so constantly reprehended, from
Scriptural days onward, proves the instinctive yearning of mankind for a
system of life regulated by good taste, high intelligence and sound
affections. But, it remains true that, in the succession of great
commercial epochs, coincident with the progress of modern science and
invention, _almost_ everything can be bought and sold, and so _almost_