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 expenditure 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.