heir to an English estate might or might not go to a university.
He could, like the young Charles James Fox, become a scholar, but
like Fox, who knew some of the virtues and all the supposed
gentlemanly vices, he might dissipate his energies in hunting,
gambling, and cockfighting. He would almost certainly make the
grand tour of Europe, and, if he had little Latin and less Greek,
he was pretty certain to have some familiarity with Paris and a
smattering of French. The eighteenth century was a period of
magnificent living in England. The great landowner, then, as now,
the magnate of his neighborhood, was likely to rear, if he did
not inherit, one of those vast palaces which are today burdens so
costly to the heirs of their builders. At the beginning of the
century the nation to honor Marlborough for his victories could
think of nothing better than to give him half a million pounds
to build a palace. Even with the colossal wealth produced by
modern industry we should be staggered at a residence costing
millions of dollars. Yet the Duke of Devonshire rivaled at
Chatsworth, and Lord Leicester at Holkham, Marlborough's building
at Blenheim, and many other costly palaces were erected during
the following half century. Their owners sometimes built in order
to surpass a neighbor in grandeur, and to this day great estates
are encumbered by the debts thus incurred in vain show. The heir
to such a property was reared in a pomp and luxury undreamed of
by the frugal young planter of Virginia. Of working for a
livelihood, in the sense in which Washington knew it, the young
Englishman of great estate would never dream.

The Atlantic is a broad sea and even in our own day, when instant
messages flash across it and man himself can fly from shore to
shore in less than a score of hours, it is not easy for those on